


The Long Road Home

by ladyshadowdrake



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Happy Ending, Hostage Taking, Identity Porn, M/M, Miscommunication, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-28 00:11:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 47,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6305860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyshadowdrake/pseuds/ladyshadowdrake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maria Stark told her son that the Mark on his wrist meant there was a special someone out there just for him. Sarah Rogers told her son that his soulmate was waiting for him, and he needed to be strong for them. </p><p>Neither of them ever mentioned what to do if that soulmate just doesn’t want them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Red around the edges

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a tumblr prompt, and grew well beyond its original premise.
> 
> Many thanks to synteis and musicalluna for beta/support/cheerleading!

Tony swayed on his feet. Or maybe the elevator was swaying. Either way, he moved gently side-to-side as the elevator hummed its way up to the Avengers sparkling new floor. He scrubbed his hands over his face, catching sight of his watch and blinking at it. 2:10. He was pretty sure that was 2:10 in the morning, but he’d already pushed the button and he was too tired to reroute the elevator, and it was a tower full of night owls anyway. Someone would be up. Or Tony might just sit on the couch in the common room for a while and pretend that it was okay for him to be there without the armor.

The elevator door _swooshed_ open, immediately filling with the rich scent of a meat sauce, warm with herbs and a little sharp with tomatoes. He took a deep breath, unexpectedly transported back to Jarvis’ kitchen on spaghetti night, Jarvis singing merrily (off-key) as he chopped vegetables. The image was so sudden and so strong that he was startled to find Steve in the kitchen instead of his butler. Steve was mid-curse as the door opened, covered from hip to neck in a splash of hot tomato sauce. He reached down to grab the hem of his t-shirt and, maybe it was just because he was half-way to asleep on his feet, but the world did one of those fuzzy slow motion tricks as Steve pulled the shirt over his head. Tony stopped dead just outside of the elevator, staring motionless at Steve’s Mark.

The ding of the elevator doors sliding closed made Steve jump. He caught Tony’s reflection in the oven door and spun around. “ _Jesus_ , Mr. Stark, you – you startled me!” he squawked, holding the shirt up to cover his nipples.

Under normal circumstances, Tony would have been happy to just stare at Steve’s exposed – and really unfairly fantastic- ab muscles, but his eyes were glued to Steve’s right wrist. The Mark wasn’t visible anymore, but Tony couldn’t have mistaken _that_ , could never pretend he hadn’t seen it. He felt himself moving across the living room as if in a dream, hesitating at the step into the kitchen.

“Mr….Stark?” Steve tried after an uncomfortable minute. “Are you alright?”

Tony jerked his eyes up to Steve’s face. He didn’t _do_ tongue-tied, but he couldn’t make his voice work. His mouth opened and closed and no sound came out, or at least no sound that he could hear over the thunder of his own pulse. His stomach twisted strangely and his knees felt weak, his thighs tingling like he needed to run, or sit, or do anything but expect his legs to hold his weight.

Steve took a hesitant step toward him and Tony automatically stepped back until he hit the couch, his reaction freezing Steve in his tracks. He lifted his hands to show they were empty while Tony fumbled at his suit jacket, popping one of the buttons off in his haste. Steve gave him an uncertain look, eyes growing wider in concern as Tony struggled out of the arms of his jacket, let it fall to the floor, and reached for his left cuff. He stopped, abruptly wracked with doubt. He hadn’t slept in almost 72 hours, and it had been a long three days of fighting with this board and that board, all but begging for the final permits and signatures he needed to secure the Avenger’s future and ability to operate out in the open. He could have been hallucinating. It wouldn’t make sense that _Steve_ , of all people, would have _that_ Mark.

“Are you okay… Tony?” Steve asked softly, the kind of soft he used with frightened civilians who were two steps away from a breakdown.

Tony couldn’t make himself answer. Swallowing hard, he slid the cufflink out and dropped it into his pocket. Carefully not looking at Steve, he rolled the cuff back, pulled the band off his wrist, and turned his arm over to stare at his Mark – an icy, iridescent star with red tips cradled by four arches below, and the slash of a sword above. He stared down at it, his thumb pressing below it, squeezing until the Mark flushed with blood.

“Mr. Stark?”

Tony jerked back, startled. He hadn’t heard Steve move, but Steve was across the kitchen and around the island, his shirt back on, sauce splatters and all. Tony caught sight of Steve’s blue wristband on the counter by the sink, abandoned at some point while he’d cooked. Tony was sure he’d always been wearing it when they’d been together, but Tony didn’t spend a lot of time staring at people’s wrists. Usually they were in business mode when he saw Steve, and so Steve was in one uniform or another. So was Tony. Mr. Stark the benefactor, or Iron Man the teammate, either only called when there was trouble. He realized that they’d never touched skin-to-skin before. When they first met as Mr. Stark and Captain America, Steve had been in uniform with his gloves on when they shook hands. Iron Man isolated Tony from all touch.

His eyes met Steve’s concerned gaze, and Tony slowly turned his wrist over and held it up. It was a strain not to close his eyes and wait out the reaction – or lack of reaction – but Tony forced his eyes to stay open, kept his gaze on Steve’s face. In the nightmare of this scenario, Steve said, _um… nice Mark? Do you need help?_ And it turned out that Tony _was_ hallucinating, or sleep walking, or not awake at all.

Steve’s expression cycled from concerned to confused to… shocked? Horrified? The color flushed out of his face and he lifted his hand slowly, fingers of his Marked hand reaching hesitantly for Tony’s. Tony went very still, his mind whited out with gibbering excitement and fright. He was going to touch his mate, or at least his mate was going to touch him. It most likely wouldn’t activate the bond until their Marks touched, but Steve was going to put his skin on Tony’s skin, and it was all he’d been half-anticipating and half-dreading his entire life. It took up a mantra in his head – _touch me, touch me, touch me_ – and it was hard not to lunge forward and grab Steve by his arms, fold into him, sob against his chest.

Steve’s hand froze so close to his skin that Tony could feel his body heat, and then jerked back as if he’d been burned. He took a step back, turning his wrist over to stare at the matching Mark like his world was collapsing around his feet.

“If we don’t,” Steve said in a weird voice that sounded at once too soft and too close, “If we don’t touch, it won’t form the bond.” He looked up at Tony with bright eyes, flushed cheeks. He was quiet for several beats, swallowed hard, and added, “It will be like we never knew.”

Tony had read the phrase ‘like being punched in the gut.’ He’d been punched in the gut before and he knew what that felt like better than most people. It wasn’t at all like being punched in the gut, it was like being _gutted_ , torn open from groin to sternum, like being drowned. Like coming _back_ from being drowned, gasping and choking on the raw burn in his throat. He stood frozen for several seconds, locked in a staring contest with Steve _fucking_ Rogers, who’d looked at his Mark and rejected him.

Maybe it wasn’t a surprise, shouldn’t have been a surprise. Tony nodded, or at least he felt his head moving, his shoulders relaxing, the air in his lungs trickling out. He pulled the black band back over his wrist and rolled his sleeve down, reattaching the cufflink automatically. Steve was still staring at his wrist, and Tony wanted to claw the Mark off, saw off his entire arm if it would just erase Steve even knowing about it. He’d never wanted time travel so badly in his life, and considering all the numerous mistakes he’d made and the nights he’d spent un-living them at the bottom of a bottle, that was saying something. Tony finally straightened to look at his…at Captain America. He seemed wrong, fragile, uncomfortable like he didn’t want to be in Tony’s space anymore, but he was too polite to step away. Of all the things Tony had ever been accused of, polite wasn’t on the list, so he didn’t hesitate to take a wide step back.

“T-…Mr. Stark, I hope this doesn’t –. We still need – …” Steve shifted restlessly, hiding his arm subtly behind his back, his eyebrows furrowed into a hard bunch over his nose. He wouldn’t meet Tony’s eyes, couldn’t get his gaze anywhere near Tony. What a fucking nightmare.

Always looking out for the team. Well. It wasn’t like Tony was new to being wanted for his money. “Don’t worry, Cap. The funding is already settled, the Avenger’s Initiative is safe.” He was proud of how even his voice stayed, that he didn’t stumble once, didn’t let the bitterness and disappointment show. It was what he’d come up to the Avenger’s floor to announce anyway, might as well get it out. He didn’t know what was more surprising – that Steve was awake, or that none of the other tortured souls on the floor were up with him.

“Oh. Of course,” Steve answered slowly, frowning. “But I meant Iron Man. I was just. I hope that you won’t stop him from…” He drew in a breath and straightened his shoulders resolutely, jaw going firm like he was posing for one of the old propaganda posters, eyes landing somewhere above Tony’s left ear. “You’re a good man, Mr. Stark, and I hope that you won’t let any conflict with me keep Iron Man out of the game. We really need him.”

Also not a surprise. Fuck, how did he get to this place? He thought back on that press conference and wished, not for the first – or last – time that he’d thrown those cards in the air and told them _I am Iron Man_ , instead of playing the lie that Iron Man was his bodyguard. He couldn’t remember all the reasons the lie had made sense at the time. But then again, at least Steve being unaware that ‘Mr. Stark’ and Iron Man were one and the same meant that Iron Man wasn’t off the team. Tony wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or a curse.

“Of course I won’t. He’s a free man, not my captive. In reality, he doesn’t listen to much of anything I say.” Which was true on more levels than he wanted to admit. He picked his coat up off the floor and put his arms carefully into the sleeves. He concentrated on it like his life depended on it, and it might have with how tight his chest felt, how hard his heart was beating under the reactor, how difficult it was to breathe. He had to do it very slowly and concentrate on making each breath even and sure, or he would break, and he would never live it down if he broke in front of Steve.

“Thank you,” Steve said haltingly.

Tony nodded, but he wasn’t sure what he was really being thanked for. Not making a scene? Not grabbing Steve’s wrist and forcing their Marks together? Not being a petty asshole who would withdraw his support of the world’s current best chance at a peace-keeping organization over a ‘personal conflict’ with his _soulmate_? He felt his head still moving, might have still been nodding but he wasn’t sure.

“Night, Cap.”

“Goodnight, Tony,” Steve said to his back. Tony didn’t turn around as he crossed the common area to the elevator, and he pushed himself immediately to one side as soon as he made it in so he didn’t have to watch the doors close on his mate’s face.

He started counting prime numbers, but he skipped impatiently to 8,101 and made it to 10,007 by the time the elevator opened on his private floor. He thought he would have just sank down in the entryway and not moved until morning, except Pepper was seated at his bar, looking pristine in a navy skirt suit and blush blouse, her jacket tossed over one chair, wearing the string of golden pearls with the ruby in the center that he’d gotten her for… a birthday? Christmas? Did he give her gifts on St. Patrick ’s Day? He might have, or it might not have been a gift-giving occasion at all, because he usually forgot those and Pepper just got something for herself from him. It was probably a random date in June when he realized that he couldn’t remember getting anything for Valentine’s Day and went over the top just in case. It must have been something that he picked out (or had Jarvis pick out), because she wouldn’t have gotten herself something in Iron Man colors.

“Miss Potts,” he greeted, plastering on a smile that _felt_ like plaster, brittle and fragile. He’d forgotten that she was on Hong Kong time until next week. She turned in the barstool with a bright smile, but stopped whatever she’d been about to say. The smile drained off her face.

Setting her pen down, she slid off the stool. He realized that she was barefoot, her four-inch nude Louis Vuittons with the red accents tipped over under the bar. He’d always really liked her feet – he hadn’t realized he’d had a thing for feet until he saw her walking barefoot through his room for the first time. He probably only had a thing for _her_ feet anyway. It wasn’t like he’d never seen anyone else barefoot in his private space. She approached him carefully with one hand held out. He only saw it through his peripheral vision, still watching her lovely feet, toenails painted in a neutral, soft pink.

“Are you dying?” she asked when she got to the steps. When he didn’t immediately answer, she continued with, “Is _Rhodey_ dying? Are all the Avengers okay? Jarvis? The bots? Oh, god! It’s not Happy!” Tony’s eyes snapped up to her face and she covered her mouth with both hands, eyes immediately going moist.

“Everyone is fine,” Tony finally managed to blurt out before she went into Non-Business Related Panic Mode™. “Everything is fine, nothing is wrong.”

She let out an explosive breath of relief and put her hand on her chest like she could force her heart to slow down. “Don’t tell me nothing is wrong. I’ve learned how to interpret your various _something is wrong_ faces, Tony,” she lectured, her voice a tiny sharp in retaliation for frightening her, but Tony wasn’t listening because his eyes were glued to her wrist. It was bare of its usual sparkling cuff, and she wore a simple white gold engagement ring instead. Pepper stopped when she caught his gaze and jerked her hand back guiltily.

“You and Happy finally ready to come out of hiding?” Tony asked through his plaster smile. He tried to give her a real one because she deserved it. They’d been together still when Happy had caught her arm to save her from a fall and, entirely accidentally, touched her Mark. Tony had wanted to give the two of them time to cement their bond before the spotlight dropped on them, so they’d let the wider world continue to believe that he and Pepper were still an item. The media loved to gush about how Pepper had tamed him, and it was alright, it was a good excuse to avoid the clubs and the bars, the noisy crowds that he’d once craved and now mostly just sounded like battle, like screaming.

“It’s been almost a year,” Pepper said finally, looking down at the ring, her features softening. “It’s time, really.” She looked back up at him when Tony nodded in understanding. He was already planning the break up – had been planning it since the day he watched two of his best friends Bond right on his office floor. He would arrange a party, one of the big affairs. He didn’t think he could bring himself to drink (no, he _could_ , but he knew if he did he would never give it up again), but he had enough experience being drunk to pull off the act. He would find some (tall, blond, muscular) man to fuck in the bathroom and arrange to get caught. It should be enough to shield Pepper and Happy from the worst of the spotlight, and he could really use someone to fuck right about now. Win-win.

“Tony!”

He jerked away from his plans. “Yes, dear?”

“I don’t know what you’re planning, but stop it. We’ve already talked about it, and you’re going to let us come out in our own way. I mean it,” she added firmly when Tony only made a noise that most people took for agreement. It had never worked on her so he should probably stop trying. He held his hands up in surrender and started altering the plans. Maybe he could release some big new product, something that would overshadow the inevitable backbiters who liked to gossip and make spectacles. He barely even flinched when she put a hand around his shoulder – the left hand, without the sparkling, wide bracelet she’d picked out for herself on their anniversary – and he didn’t even fight her as she led him to the couch.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Pepper urged gently.

“I told you that nothing’s wrong.” Tony used to be so good at affecting confused innocence. Not that Pepper had ever believed him, but he usually at least got a smile for effort. He must have lost some skills somewhere along the way that he needed to brush up on. He would have lots of time to himself to work on it, at least.

“Tony…” she drew in a breath and let it out. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. Just as long as it’s not about your health, or the health of one our friends, or the future of our company, then I won’t press you. But you can tell me,” she added gently.

He opened his mouth to tell her, again, that he was fine. What came out was, “I met my soulmate today.”

Pepper blinked. Her lips parted and her mouth slowly dropped open. “Tony! That’s – ”

“He doesn’t want me,” Tony interrupted before she could get to the gushing part, the excited part, wanting to know all about him, and who he was, and _where_ he was, and why Tony wasn’t locked up in a cabin in the Alps with strict orders not to be disturbed for a month. His mouth felt like ash, tasted like curdled milk, like the words had died between his teeth and rotted.

She stopped, her elated expression falling into confusion, and then grief. “Oh, Tony…” she whispered, obviously at a loss for what to say, and what did anyone say to something like that? A rejected soul bond was… well, not unheard of, but not common unless bad TV plots were taken into consideration.

“It’s fine,” Tony said by rote. “I shouldn’t have even met him in the first place, it was a fluke, a one in a trillion chance.”

“Who is it?” she asked, shifting into righteous avenger mode. She would have made an excellent Avenger, but he couldn’t get her to touch a suit. He had one for her, just in case. Pink and gold, and beautiful just like her.

Tony waved her away. “I’m not telling you _._ ” He made his voice firm and she looked like she wanted to protest, but didn’t. He didn’t need to tell her not to tell anyone, and he didn’t need to tell her not to push. The set of her jaw said that her apparent telepathy didn’t mean she was going to let it go, but Tony didn’t think her suspicion would ever fall to Captain America. Who would think someone like Steve would carry a Mark that matched someone like Tony? He shouldn’t have told her at all, but he’d promised after the palladium poisoning incident that he wouldn’t keep secrets from her, and he’d stuck to it as best as he could.

They sat in awkward silence for a moment, Tony just enjoying how close she was. They’d been… really, they’d been bad together. They made great friends, and they worked together like a perfectly engineered machine, but they never should have been anything else. She twisted the ring on her finger, making it catch the light.

“Tony, we don’t have to –”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you do.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I’m happy for you. Did you set a date?”

“Next week. We were going to try to get it out of the way as fast as we can.”

And just before the end of the quarter, Tony noticed, but didn’t say. He couldn’t have asked for a better CEO, but sometimes he wished that she’d do things just for herself and her own happiness once in a while. “We’ll throw you a party here at the tower,” Tony announced. Holding up his hands, he reassured her, “Something small, low-key. Just you and two or three hundred of your closet friends.”

“ _Tony_!” she complained, but she was smiling. She turned to kiss his temple just as the elevator door pinged open.

“Trying to steal my girl?” Happy asked as the doors opened, wide face split in a bright grin.

“You stole her from me first,” Tony said, and he mostly managed to keep his tone right. “Besides, she kissed me. I’m the innocent party here.” He untangled himself from Pepper’s arms and stood, holding a hand out to his friend and head of security. “Congratulations, again.”

Happy enfolded his hand in a warm grip and reached out to pull him into a hug. “We appreciate everything you’ve done, Boss.”

“I’m just happy you kids are finally getting out on your own. I’ve been waiting to turn your room in a pop art gallery.”

Behind him, Pepper snorted indelicately and Happy exchanged a glance with her. “We’ll be out of your hair soon,” he promised, letting Tony go and holding a hand out for Pepper. She let him tug her off the couch, but stopped at Tony’s side and reached out to hold onto his arm. He could tell she wanted to give him some of her usual reassurance and comfort, and he wanted it, but he didn’t want her to have to lie to Happy later when he asked why, so he just nodded at her.

“Thank you, Miss Potts.”

She hesitated, but replied, “Goodnight, Mr. Stark.”

“Night, Boss,” Happy added, and tugged her into his chest to pull her to their room.

Tony watched them go. He’d gotten used to having them in his suite, even if their differing schedules meant that they rarely bumped into each other. It would be quiet without them. Maybe he would break his own rule about Dum-E leaving the workshop and bring him upstairs. Just to build the pop art gallery. He felt like he was obligated to now that he’d said he would. It would be a good project, something that could conceivably keep him busy and out of the Avenger’s common room for weeks, maybe months. Really, if he wanted to make sure he had the best art, it would need to be months.

He didn’t realize his eyes were leaking until he tried to take a breath and it got caught in the sticky mucous at the back of his throat. He brought his wrist up to wipe the tracks of moisture away, but all it did was draw attention to the thin boarder of red and gold around his wristband. He let his arm drop to his side and retreated from the living room, just in case Happy or Pepper ventured back out.

Howard had given him his first wristband when he was five. Black with the Stark Industries logo at one edge. Tony had thought it was a present, but he’d become increasingly aware of Howard’s strange reaction to his Mark every time the wristband came off. The reactions grew stranger as Tony got older, Howard deeper into the bottle, deeper into his depression. Sometimes he would call Tony into his study, gesture for him to take the band off, and just stare at the Mark between swallows of scotch. As a teenager, Tony had thought he was just jealous. Howard had remained Unmarked to the day he died.

It made more sense now. Captain America’s Mark was never made public knowledge, just that he’d had one, and that he’d never found his mate. Seeing Cap’s mark on Tony’s wrist must have driven Howard mad. He would have recognized it, would have known that Steve was still alive, must have just been waiting for the day that Tony’s Mark turned to a scar. Every time he saw the Mark on Tony’s wrist, still vibrant and pulsing with life, it would have been a taunt, a reminder of his failure.

Tony wasn’t sure if it would have been crueler to just tell him what the Mark meant, but he indulged in a brief surge of renewed anger at his father, at Howard’s inability to communicate. _My greatest creation was you_. Bullshit. Tony dropped into his seat at his workstation and just stared at the tabletop. He was tempted to find the nearest bottle of liquor and a glass of ice cubes, but he would have to go up to the Avengers’ floor to get it, and that wasn’t a trip he was taking again any time soon. He ripped off the wristband instead and glared at his mark, still bright, the colors shifting just slightly in the light, enough to give the illusion of movement, of _life_. 

“Forty-two years,” he told it in an undertone. “Forty-two years waiting for someone I can’t have.” He put the band back on and resolutely turned his attention to the latest project, upgrades to the Avengers’ quinjet. He closed it as soon as it opened and brought up the newest StarkPhone specs instead. If he put his mind to it, he could make the next big leap in smartphone technology viable for a press release in a week. He’d have to work day and night, but it would be enough to give Pepper and Happy some cover. It wasn’t like he was going to be sleeping for the next few days anyway.


	2. Hemorrhage

Steve managed to stay on his feet until the elevator doors closed. Safe from Tony Stark’s searing gaze, he sank to the couch. His t-shirt stuck to his chest, cold and smelling strongly of tomatoes and rosemary, but he noticed it only peripherally. His Mark seemed to burn and twist over his skin. Turning his wrist over to rest his arm on his leg, he stared at it. After the ice, Steve had covered up his Mark and tried not to think about. He’d thought that his mate would be in their 80s or 90s, and what could he offer them but pain, fear, and loneliness? His work with the Avengers was dangerous and he could never guarantee that he would come home at the end of it, that he wouldn’t be injured. No matter how lonely he was, he couldn’t inflict that kind of pain and uncertainty on his mate. They would find each other in another life if the reincarnation theories were to be believed.

 _Tony Stark is my mate,_ he thought numbly. He couldn’t help but do the math – if not for the ice, Steve would have been 52 when Tony was born. Would he and Howard have kept in touch? Would Steve maybe have been _Uncle Steve_ , sitting next to Peggy on the couch one Christmas morning when little Tony’s pajama sleeve rode up and there it would have been, Steve’s Mark on a child? Or would it have been sooner than that? Would Howard have set his infant son in Steve’s arms, only to have Steve gasp at the first touch of his soulmate’s skin?

What would they have become? Certainly platonic. Steve would have been 70 when Tony turned 18.

With the ice, the difference was reversed. Tony was twenty years older than him, and so obviously not interested in having a mate that he might as well have just screamed it. He’d been… angry, horrified to realize he shared his Mark with Steve. And why wouldn’t he be? He was in his 40s, a successful businessman, and in a committed relationship with an amazing woman. He had everything he could possibly want and more than enough to keep him happy and busy. The last thing he needed was a mate upsetting his life.  A mate like Steve who was terrible at romantic relationships, and didn’t know how to talk to people if he wasn’t giving order, and had nothing to offer someone like Tony. A mate who risked his life on an almost daily basis.  It was understandable, the way Tony had stepped away from him, the color draining out of his face, eyes wide, the sick look on his face as Steve reached for the Mark. His relief and ready agreement not to form the bond had been a living nightmare to Steve, but he’d been the one to offer, and he couldn’t fault Tony for accepting.

It was understandable. So why did it feel like his stomach had turned to acid in his gut? He curled over his arm, cradling it to his chest. His breath came out in a crack like ice breaking, and he couldn’t have stopped the flood of sobs after that with a truck of cement. They came harder and faster, until it almost felt like an asthma attack, each gasping breath making his chest burn and his ribs ache. He opened his knees to let his head fall between them and tried to concentrate on just breathing, but he wasn’t even crying over Tony anymore – or not entirely. It was everyone and every chance he’d lost – Bucky and the Commandos, Peggy and the life they would have had, that art degree he’d always said he was going to go back for after the war, the teaching position he’d wanted eventually, children. And yes, his mate.

Even if he’d married Peggy, he’d always thought that they would have found their mates eventually. They would have stayed married and opened their home up to their mates, or maybe… maybe they wouldn’t have. One partner finding their soulmate was the only acceptable reason for divorce in his day, but he liked to imagine that he and Peggy could have stayed together, could have shared their lives. Peggy had found her mate in 1955. It could have worked.

He was so lost in his world of _what-if_ and _could-haves_ that he didn’t realize he wasn’t alone until the TV clicked on. Steve jerked upright and found Natasha sitting against the opposite arm of the couch.

“Feel like Food Network?” she asked without the slightest hint that there was anything unusual about Steve sobbing on the couch like a jilted girl.

He wiped his face hurriedly and shoved himself upright. “Sure.” His voice cracked around the word and he tried to hide it by clearing his throat. She didn’t appear to notice and flipped through the menus while Steve beat a hasty retreat back to his room, peeling the stained shirt off as he went. He considered not going back out, but he could still feel that horrible, aching burn in his chest, and he knew he would break into sobs again if he stayed in his room. He might just stay in bed until the next call to assemble if he let the tears start again.

So his mate didn’t want him. He wasn’t the only one in the world to not get his happy ending. The world spun on, and Steve still had a job to do. Maybe in the next life they would be luckier. It didn’t make him feel any better, but eventually it would have to at least stop feeling like a blade in his chest. It wasn’t the first thing he’d wanted but couldn’t have.

A competition cooking show was playing when he made it back to the living room. His face tingled from the cold wash, and he’d picked his softest t-shirt to replace the stained one. He didn’t think he would be able to get the tomato sauce out, so it would have to become his painting shirt. Natasha glanced at him as he passed the couch back to the kitchen.

“What are you making?” she asked without turning around.

Grabbing his abandoned wristband, Steve pulled it on without looking at his Mark. “It’s an overnight sauce,” he said, “My mom used to make it when she was going to be working a double shift. Simmers all night and all day, just pour it over pasta or chicken.”

She laughed in a short snort. “You live with _Clint Barton_ , and you think it’s going to last to dinner tomorrow?”

“It will if he doesn’t want to be running drills at three in the morning.”

Natasha laughed at him again, and then fell quiet while Steve finished putting the sauce together. He kept remembering Tony’s expression in the reflection of the oven door and had to force himself to focus on the food so he didn’t just drop to his knees and curl into a ball.

He put the lid on the sauce, made sure the heat wasn’t too high and made his way back into the living room. He was startled when Natasha moved over to sit against his side as soon as he sat down, but he lifted his arm anyway. She curled against him, tucking her feet up under her body. “You okay?” she asked without looking away from the screen.

“Yes,” he lied.

Her eyes slid over to him, but she didn’t call him on his lie. Eventually, she fell asleep against him. He could have carried her back to her bed, but he stayed where he was. Having her warmth and familiar scent around him was comforting, and he eventually fell asleep with his cheek pillowed on her hair.

*~*

The next time he saw Tony was on TV. He was lucky that Clint and Bruce were both turned away from him, because he couldn’t have bluffed a cat just then. He stifled the automatic sound that got caught in his throat, and sat slowly on a barstool. Tony didn’t look good. His eyes were lined in deep circles that were visible even under his red tinted glasses, his face looked almost gray, and the set of his shoulders said he was in pain. Steve reached for his Mark, sliding his thumb under the band to push against it. It was subtly warmer than the rest of his skin, the edges slightly raised, and his pulse beneath it made it feel alive. He knew Tony couldn’t feel it, but he liked to think that it might be some kind of comfort to him.

“What’s going on?” Steve asked once he was sure that his voice wouldn’t shake.

“Stark is showboating,” Clint answered. Steve couldn’t see his face, but he could hear the rolled eyes in his tone.

“He’s previewing the newest StarkPhone,” Bruce said more helpfully. “Some exciting new developments that his competitors are going to be tripping over for the next six months.”

Clint made a noncommittal noise. “It’s just more money in his pocket.”

Steve frowned, but Clint seemed unrepentant. He tossed a tennis ball in the air and caught it. They’d only been in the Tower for a month, and Clint was having the most difficulty with their benefactor, the son of the man who’d rescued the tesseract from the ocean. Maybe if Tony weren’t his mate, Steve would have had been more understanding of Clint’s misplaced anger in the face of his trauma. But Tony _was_ his mate, even if their bond would never be formed. It was all he could do not to reach out and snatch the tennis ball out of the air and pelt the back of Clint’s head with it.

He tried to be mindful of the reaction, aware that he couldn’t get into fights with everyone who bad-mouthed Tony Stark, or he would never have a moment’s rest. He was also aware that up until a week ago, his feelings toward Tony were only cautiously warm – there was a lot about Tony that he couldn’t fathom, a lot he disagreed with, and a lot that he thought was probably hiding something deeper, something greater than the smiling industrialist playboy he seemed to be. Steve had been grateful for Tony’s financial support, the roof over their heads, and the army of lawyers that kept the Avengers as a private organization and out of jail. On a personal level, he hadn’t been sure that they would have ever been much closer than he’d been with Howard – friendly, but not friends. Knowing that Tony’s soul was the perfect match for his own had made him reevaluate his opinions, but there was no way he could separate out his bias. He was only human.

“You realize that it’s his money that pays for our headquarters, our gear, and our benefits, the food in the fridge and our paychecks, right?” Bruce asked, interrupting Steve’s circular thoughts, the same thoughts he’d been gnawing over for a week. Steve kept his mouth shut and tried to think of what he would have said if he’d never known about the Marks – that Bruce was right, and that they didn’t have to like Tony Stark personally to be grateful for his support.

Clint shrugged, making a short, nasal sound against the back of his throat that was not quite a snort and not quite a laugh. “Like it doesn’t benefit him just as much to have us here? You know he holds the rights to our merchandising? Avengers’ Merch is big business.”

“The profits go to a fund that covers property damage and medical care for civilian casualties,” Steve noted, just barely holding on to his temper. He’d never been able to stand down when someone he cared about was being maligned. Clint dropped his head back briefly to look at Steve. He frowned and looked back at the screen, the tennis ball staying in his lap as he turned his attention to the press conference.

“It has been a busy week for Stark Industries,” the reporter said as Tony stepped away from the podium, turning the presentation over to a tall, dark woman in a red business suit. Steve tried to follow Tony’s progress, but he was immediately swallowed by the crowd and the camera panned away. “Just yesterday, CEO Pepper Potts and head of Stark Industries’ security, Happy Hogan, were married in a small civil ceremony. According to a press release, the unlikely pair are soulmates, and have been Bonded for over a year. Miss Potts – rather, Mrs. Hogan – was unavailable for comment, but Mr. Stark Tweeted them well-wishes this morning before the conference.”

“Of course that’s what they would harp on,” Bruce said, obviously annoyed. Steve barely heard him. His ears were filled with the rush of his own pulse. Had Tony known? The thought that Pepper had been lying to Tony made Steve flush with sudden rage that he reined in forcefully. Tony and Pepper’s relationship wasn’t his business. He had no claim to be angry on Tony’s behalf, and had no idea what Tony did or didn’t know, or how he felt about his girlfriend finding her mate. Steve would have been happy for Peggy.  

He was saved from further uncomfortable realizations by the assemble alarm going off, red globes dropping out of the ceiling and flashing in time with the alarm. Clint’s hands flew to his ears and he winced as he adjusted his hearing aids even as he rocked himself off the couch. Bruce was up a second behind him, and Steve lingered only long enough to make sure they were both following before breaking into a jog as he headed for his uniform. It had been redesigned and it was easier to get in and out of than the original SHIELD redesign, more functional than showy, and Steve preferred the darker colors. He snagged it off the shelf in the hallway as he passed it to the hangar jet, cradling it in the crook of one arm. He stopped at his room to grab the shield from where it lay propped against the wall and hurried down the hallway to the hangar bay, fitting his comm unit into his left ear as he went.

“Cap on comms,” he announced. “Sound off if you’re plugged in.”

“Widow here,” Natasha answered immediately.

“Banner here,” Bruce added a moment later and Steve didn’t bother to try having the ‘code names’ fight with him again. It wasn’t like the world didn’t know their identities, so it wasn’t security as much as Steve’s training that made him wince. It was also different for Bruce – he didn’t put on a Hulk suit, the Hulk was an altogether different person and didn’t respond on comms anyway, so it was a losing battle from the beginning.

“Testing for Hawkeye.”

“Reading you fine, Hawkeye,” Natasha replied smoothly. “Keeping the pilot’s seat warm for you. This chair’s a lot more comfortable than mine.”

“Don’t even think about it, Nat,” Clint warned. He cut in front of Steve at the hallway intersection, tossing a wink at him over his shoulder and sticking his tongue out. Steve suppressed a childish impulse to race him to the quinjet and angled his body instead so that Bruce could get in front of him. The scientist didn’t have a uniform despite Steve’s best efforts to convince him that at least wearing an Avengers shirt would show more team solidarity. He did carry a large duffle over one shoulder and had heavy kits in either hand, each container prominently marked with the Avengers’ symbol. Steve scooped one of the kits up so Bruce could stabilize the duffle bag, returning his nod. He’d found that Bruce, as quiet and mild-mannered as he seemed, couldn’t be pushed into doing anything he didn’t want to, and Steve got the impression that he accepted the help more for Steve’s benefit than his own.

“Iron Man?” Steve asked, trying not to hold his breath.

After a beat, Natasha responded, “Hasn’t checked in yet.”

Steve swallowed quietly and let his breath out. “Mr. Stark might need him here. Lift off as soon as we’re on board.” Clint hopped up the ramp and was shimmying out of his civilian clothes in seconds without a trace of modesty. Bruce eased past him to his station and Steve followed just long enough to drop the kit at his feet. Nat had the wheels off the tarmac before the ramp was up and Steve balanced automatically on his way back to the bench. Clint was already buttoning his cargo pants up as Steve got his t-shirt off.

“What are we dealing with?” Steve asked, folding the shirt automatically and dropping it on the bench. The routine of it dropped him into work mode. It banished Tony and his Mark from his mind and let him forget the way everything felt like it had been falling apart for a week. Next to him, Clint pulled his vest on and zipped it up. He started sorting through the rest of the gear while Steve unhooked his belt and slid it through the loops.

“Explosion on a tanker off the coast. It’s listing and dumping oil into the ocean.” The ramp sealed with a hiss of equalizing pressure. Steve braced himself on a bulkhead for the burst of acceleration he knew was coming, and worked his jaw to make his ears pop. “Tin Britches would be handy about now,” she added.

“I always knew you loved me, Widow,” came Iron Man’s voice in a jaunty reply.

Steve luckily had his under armor over his head and it muffled his sigh of relief as Natasha responded with a quip in Russian – _love wasn’t the word she would have chosen_. Steve pulled the gray shirt down and belted his pants over it. “Glad you could join us, Shell-head.”

“Unlike some people, _I_ actually have a day job,” Iron Man responded. His electronic voice sounded oddly stiff, and Steve couldn’t help but wonder if maybe Tony had confided in his bodyguard, and if that would change their relationship. He didn’t see Iron Man as much as he wanted, but he counted the man as the best among his few friends, and the thought of losing both his mate and his friend in one blow was enough to leave him momentarily winded. It could also just be a malfunction in his vocal processor, or Steve could be projecting.

“I’m going to pull ahead of you and see what I can do about stopping that leak,” Iron Man announced.

“Copy,” Steve acknowledged. He buckled his chest piece on as he leaned over to look out the window. Iron Man gave him a brief salute and fired his repulsors to outpace the jet. Steve gave himself until he had his gloves on to watch Iron Man’s quickly shrinking form retreat into the distance and then turned his face away from the window. He sat down to get his boots on while Clint hustled Natasha out of the pilot’s chair. She slid smoothly into the copilot’s seat and resettled her headset.

“Who called us in?” Steve asked, zipping up the left boot.

“National Guard, but SHIELD and DHS are onsite as well. They’re thinking sabotage.” With a few clicks, Natasha launched a presentation on the rear screens. It was a hastily drawn up simulation of the tanker, with its course marked in red dots. The tanker veered sharply off of its marked course, and then the simulation showed three explosions – two aft and one amidships.

“Could the first explosion have triggered the other two?” Steve asked, but he already knew the answer from the placement of the charges.  

“Unlikely,” Bruce chimed in, ignoring the simulation in favor of the report he’d pulled up at his station. “They’re placed to maim the ship without destroying it outright, all of them are above the waterline.” He made a humming noise. “Strange placement, and not very strategic.”

Steve nodded in acknowledgement. “What caused the rupture in the oil tank?”

“The third explosion. The first was on the main deck at the rear, the second was in dry cargo, and the third was right above cargo tank four. It opened a crack in the hull, physics did the rest. If it hadn’t been for that crack, they may have succeeded in just disabling it,” Natasha answered.

“So the intention may not have been to cause the leak?”

Bruce shrugged, taking off his glasses and climbing out of the science station. He wiped them idly on the corner of his rumpled button up. “Maybe not, but setting off any kind of explosion on an oil tanker seems pretty stupid if the idea _isn’t_ to cause a leak. Or a bigger boom.”

Nodding in agreement, Steve crossed his arms over his chest. He watched as the presentation continued, listing statistics. “Were all the crew evacuated?”

“All but six are accounted for,” Natasha called back. “The deck and surrounding waters are on fire. Too hot to get close.”

“Speak for yourself,” Iron Man interrupted.

Steve put a hand up to his comm unit, a useless but somehow comforting gesture. “What’s your position Iron Man?”

“I’m above the tanker. No one moving on the deck, but I’ve spotted the leak. I can try to patch it up with scrap, or I can search for survivors.  Your call, Cap.”

Steve hesitated. Every second they delayed, hundreds of gallons of oil spilled into the water. That the whole rig hadn’t gone up in an inferno was a blessing that Steve couldn’t waste. He took a breath, pursed his lips, and ordered, “Seal the breach. We’ll search for survivors from the air and try to lift them out.”

“On it,” Iron Man responded readily and went quiet on the comms.

“Those men…” Bruce started quietly.

“If they aren’t off the vessel yet, they’re probably not getting off,” Natasha answered before Steve could say anything. The kick shaking in his stomach that remembered diving into worse to save soldiers want to rebuke her, but she was probably right. “We need to get that tanker out of the fire.”

“Crews are dumping suppressants on the fire by the container-full,” Bruce said, face still troubled.

“If Iron Man can seal up the leak, does the quinjet have the power to tow the vessel out of the fire?”

Watching him in the mirror above his dash to see his lips moving, Clint made an uneasy sound. “Theoretically, in perfect conditions? Sure. I’d have to dump all of your deadweight, and we would need some way to connect a hitch to the thing. Not to mention the conditions aren’t exactly perfect. With the ship blown to pieces, it’s not going to move through the water easily. I’d like our chances better with Iron Man pulling alongside and a tug in the water. I’d like them even more if Thor were here,” he added grouchily.

“Too much flame for a tug in the water,” Bruce said. They all ignored the vain wish for Thor – he was across country on a SHIELD assignment.  

“We’ll do what we can,” Steve decided unhappily. “Where’s the helicarrier?” he asked as a last hope, but if Fury was on hand to lend the carrier’s resources, it would have already been hovering over the site.

“Southeast Asia on a diplomatic mission. Coming up on the wreck now,” Natasha added as they cleared through the billowing clouds of black smoke to see the tanker listing slightly to her port side. Steve scanned the wreckage for Iron Man, but couldn’t find him through the smoke. The flames were wreathed out around the ship and quickly spiraling closer. The fire must have started away from the tanker and was creeping in toward the leak.

“Iron Man, where are you?”

“Under the water.” His vocal modulations managed to convey being both distracted and annoyed just fine, and Steve suppressed a smile.

“What’s your situation?”

“Too busy to chat that’s for – goddamnitall!” he snarled. He continued to cuss and the comm cut out in the middle of Iron Man’s opinion of the tanker’s mother.

Steve let it go and turned back to his team. “Scan for survivors.” His hands clenched into fists as he hovered over Bruce’s shoulder. He felt useless; he wanted to be out of the quinjet doing something productive, but knew that it wouldn’t do any good to be in the flaming water. A helicopter buzzed past them close enough to make them pitch, a container swaying under it. Clint snarled as it went past, but was too busy stabilizing the quinjet to radio the helio pilot. The helicopter dropped its load of suppressant on the flames closet to the tanker with little appreciable change.

“Can we start scooping that oil out of the way, try to redirect the fire’s path?” Steve asked quietly.

Bruce glanced up at him for a beat, mouth twisting as he thought. “Maybe? But we don’t really have anything to scoop with, and I don’t know that we can do it fast enough to make a difference. As soon as it hits that pool, the whole thing is going up. And that’s only if the flames onboard don’t reach the holding tanks first.”

“Buckle up, Cap, I’ve got an idea,” Clint broke in before Bruce could come up with a solution.

Steve barely made it to a seat and did not manage to get the buckle clicked in before the quinjet jolted to the left and then went up on one wing, diving down. Steve caught onto the belt with one arm and the center console with a foot, shoving himself hard back into his seat. He felt the impact with the water, and then they jolted again as Clint dragged them up before they ended up in the ocean. His heart was jerking and squeezing in his chest, and he had to fight off a sudden wave of nausea at the angle of the dive and the sight of the water rushing up to meet him.

“Thanks for the warning,” Steve hissed out as soon as the ghost of Peggy’s voice faded.

“Anytime,” was Clint’s cheerful response.

“Keep that up, Avengers!” came an unfamiliar voice over the radio, “If you can keep the flames away from the tanker, we’ll start concentrating on the tanker itself.”

“Will do,” Nat replied and then reached across the console to smack Clint’s arm. “ _More_ warning next time.”

“We’re going again as soon as I get the altitude,” Clint said obligingly.

“ _Wait!_ I’ve got movement on the ship – main mast. Someone is alive and waving,” Bruce called excitedly.

“Abort the dive, Clint. Go pick him up.” Steve wrestled out of the twisted belts and into a harness while Bruce pulled out a line to clip to the base of the harness and another to the top.

“You don’t usually wear one of these when we’re above water,” he observed with wry amusement.

“I don’t usually have to bring someone back up with me. Masks everyone, I’m opening the cargo hatch.” Steve abandoned his cowl to pull his own mask on and felt it form a seal to his face. The jet reversed momentum abruptly and bobbed in the air as Clint brought them to a hover. He glanced back just long enough to make sure everyone had a mask on, and thumped his fist into the cargo hatch control. A warning light flared and the cabin flooded with wisps of smoke as it depressurized. Steve dropped through it, felt the cable catch and started searching for the survivor. The man clung to the main mast, so blackened with soot and oil that he looked more like a nightmarish ghoul than a human. He reached one flailing hand for Steve and then jumped. Steve barely managed to get his arms around the man’s waist, clutching onto his belt, the rescue harness hanging uselessly between them. He was slick with oil and obviously at the end of his strength. He coughed weakly into Steve’s neck and spasmed in his arms as he tried to hang on.

“Bring me up!” Steve shouted, but the winch was already winding them in. He dragged his legs up and squeezed them tightly around the survivor’s upper thighs for additional leverage. Bruce and Nat stood at the cargo bay door to drag him onto the deck and Steve quickly released his passenger to Bruce, who dragged the man away from the door to the first aid station, shoving an oxygen mask over his face even as the man passed out.

Steve had just moved his feet out of the hatch when he caught a glimmer of movement. “Wait! I think I see someone else down there. Give me more slack, he’s at the base of the mast.”

“Lot of flames down there, Cap,” Clint warned, but Steve was already dropping back through the hatch, trusting Natasha on the winch controls. He found two men at the base of the mast, one supporting the other, both of them holding onto the rail with a free hand and neither of them managing to climb. They barely even reacted to Steve dropping down right next to them. The burning ship was not unlike the burning Hydra base he’d pulled Bucky out of six months before – seven decades, but only six months – but he couldn’t afford more than a heartbeat to remember Bucky’s weight on his shoulders.

“Can the winch handle two?” he called up, already reaching for the men.

“The winch can handle the Hulk!” Natasha shouted back, so Steve looped the rescue harness around one, and unslung his belt to create a makeshift sling for the other. It was dangerous to bring them up together, and might mean dropping them both, but Steve didn’t like the chances of whoever got left behind. The stronger of the two laced one arm around his buddy’s back, and the other over Steve’s shoulders. “Haul us up!”

As soon as the winch took their weight, Steve brought his legs up, getting one knee between each of their legs to create a kind of seat, and held tight as they swayed in the wind. One of the men passed out half way up and Steve and his other passenger struggled to hold onto him as Clint dragged them away from the wreck.

“Heck of an ab work out,” Natasha observed quietly once both men were laid out on the deck, Bruce jumping hastily between them, while Natasha got oxygen flowing.

“Anyone else?” Clint called back.

“Not that I could see,” Steve replied reluctantly. The cargo hatch sealed and the cabin was momentarily a rush of angry noise as the environmental system purged out the polluted air and cycled in a fresh mixture, a little heavy on oxygen from the smell of it.

“I’ve got the breach as sealed as its going to get without a dry dock,” Iron Man announced as Clint steered them back to shore and the waiting Red Cross tent. “I can rig up a towline, but I’m not sure how much good it will do us. It’ll take too long for the quinjet to get it up to speed, even with me pulling along.”

“Still no chance of getting a tug in the water?” Steve asked as the rear door opened ten feet above the hastily cleared landing pad by the Red Cross tent. Steve could see a dozen first responders waiting with gurneys to get the wounded out.

“No way,” Iron Man replied promptly. “If I can find the engine room, maybe I can get it moving under its own power. It’s not grounded, and it’s seaworthy enough with the patch. Except, you know, for all the exploding stuff.”

“Get those towlines hooked up first and then see what you can do. We’re dropping off survivors and we’ll be right back out to you.”

“Hook up a third tow,” Bruce added in hastily as he helped lift one of the oil-slicked men onto a gurney. He reached up for his shirt as soon as the third man was clattering down the ramp with a nurse straddling his hips, an IV held up above her head.

“What’s your plan, Dr. Banner?”

“The flames might keep the tug out of the water, but all they’re going to do to the Other Guy is make him mad.” Bruce gave him a pinched smile. “And that’s kind of the point.”

“Sure he won’t just decide to tear the ship apart rather than tow it out?” Steve asked quietly.

Bruce’s eyes flickered away once, and then he looked back up at Steve. “Not if you tell him not to.”

Steve didn’t quite know that he agreed. The Hulk had listened to him during the Invasion, but telling the Hulk to smash something wasn’t the same as telling him _not_ to smash something. “I’ll do my best,” he promised.

Stripping out of pants and boxers and toeing off his shoes, Bruce hurried out to the dock. Rushing aid workers gave the naked man comically startled glances as they ran past, but having Captain America at his back stopped the few harried nurses who looked like they might grab him. “Clear the area!” Steve barked. He gestured to three fatigue-clad national guardsmen and held up a hand. “Fifty yard perimeter, go!”

The men jumped into action just as they reached the end of the dock. Iron Man was visible over the wreck as he hauled a massive chain out the water and dragged it toward the front of the limping vessel. Steve watched him for signs of fatigue and was in awe at the weight he was carrying. Whoever he was under the armor, he was an astounding man, and Steve couldn’t help but feel a flush of pride at Tony’s creation.

Glancing back down at Bruce, Steve asked, “You sure, Dr. Banner?”

“No,” Bruce said, but then leapt off the end of the dock. Steve could see his skin starting to change even as he hit the water with an oily splash and disappeared under the waves. Steve starting counting, growing concerned as he reached _three_ and was ready to jump in at _five_ when the Hulk exploded out of the waves with a thunderous roar and pounded at the water.

“HULK!” Steve shouted up at him. He picked up a rock from the edge of the dock and tossed it at the beast’s shoulder. The Hulk jumped at the impact and spun with a snarl. “Grab the chain and pull the boat, Hulk!” Steve ordered. He wasn’t in the least bit sure that the Hulk was actually going to listen to him, but he made his voice firm, erased all signs of doubt from his tone, and stood up straight and tall. He pointed at the Hulk like he had during the Invasion. The Hulk hesitated, eyes narrowing. He turned back to look at the flaming wreckage. Iron Man had welded one chain to the side of the tanker near the front.

Overhead, the quinjet roared and shot out to sea. The Hulk roared back, putting both fists down and shouting with all the not inconsiderable air in his massive lungs. Steve heard screams behind him, but he kept his eyes forward. The Hulk looked at him over his shoulder, sneered, and grunted. Without a word, _smash_ or otherwise, he strode out into the burning waves like a sea giant, disappearing as soon as the water was deep enough for him to swim.

Left on shore, all Steve could do was watch as Iron Man got one tow attached to the quinjet and circled back to direct the Hulk’s attention to another. The Hulk took a swing at him, but Iron Man danced lazily out of the way and arched over the ship to pick up the third. He wouldn’t fully appreciate how odd and magnificent the sight was until much later, but he cheered along with the gathered first responders as the trio slowly but surely pulled the massive tanker to safety.

~*~  


It was well into the night before they wearily climbed back into the jet. The flames had finally been extinguished and Iron Man had assisted Roxxon’s crews in making sure there were no further leaks before the tanker was hauled away. Steve had found Roxxon’s reluctance for Iron Man’s help more than a little suspicious, but they couldn’t keep the Avenger away by force, and Steve played dumb when the nervously grinning executive tried to explain that they would take care of the tanker, really, the Avengers had already done plenty enough and it was Roxxon’s responsibility. Steve had blithely told her that it was no problem at all, and he didn’t have to tell Iron Man to keep his eyes and cameras up while he was on the vessel.

Clint had been forced to chase the Hulk down through nearly thirty miles of open ocean before he finally got tired and shifted back into his less bad-tempered side. Bruce had slept for five hours, and then wearily roused himself to eat about 3,000 calories and help the onsite rescue workers treat the wounded. Steve had been put to use on the flat-bed cargo hauler, yanking twisted sheets of metal out of the water and scooping up oil. Booms had been set up to contain the spill and dispersants dropped by the bucket full while they started clean up. Some of the oil had burned off during the fire, but the initial estimate was that almost a 100,000 gallons had poured out into the ocean before Iron Man had closed the breach. Steve was saddened by the fish already floating upside down in the slick, and knew that it would take months to clean up the spill completely.

By the time the sun went down, hundreds of volunteers had flocked to the nearest beach and an impromptu village of tents had been erected to accommodate them. With the daylight gone, Steve finally pulled his people out and onto the jet.

“Mind if I bum a ride?” Iron Man asked wearily, landing next to Steve at the rear of the jet. His landing was a little shaky and Steve reached out automatically.

“Lazy ass,” Clint teased, tired but good-naturedly, “You’re late for the ride out, and now you want a ride back?”

“Next time, you do all the heavy lifting and _I’ll_ fly,” Iron Man responded, trudging into the jet and dropping to a bench. It had been designed with him in mind, so it didn’t even groan at the sudden introduction to nearly 400 pounds.

“Hey, you think piloting this thing is so easy, I’ll happily take your suit and we can trade,” Clint offered, not the first time he’d made a comment about piloting the Iron Man armor, or – Steve was sure was more the point – getting Iron Man _out_ of the armor. Iron Man snorted, but didn’t respond. He tipped his head back against the bulkhead and set his gauntleted hands on his thighs. He was streaked in oil, soot, and smoke, looking battle scarred and hardly recognizable as the flashy red and gold Avenger that Steve had befriend. Steve sat next to him. Across from them, Bruce was stretched out on the bench, snoring quietly. Steve was still amazed that the man had managed the six hours of work after his ordeal, and impressed by their resident physicist all over again.

They sat in silence for several minutes as Clint went through pre-flight checks and sealed the cabin. Natasha sat next to him, her hands moving as she talked. Clint’s eyes flickered to her briefly as she did so, occasionally lifting his hands up from the controls to make a sign of his own. Steve got the impression – as he often did – that they were managing to carry on two conversations at once, but he couldn’t see their hands well enough to follow along.

“You okay?” he asked finally, turning to look at Iron Man.

Iron Man didn’t respond immediately, but he finally tilted his head to show he was listening. “Ready for a bed and something I don’t have to eat through a straw,” he said after another moment.

“We could have gotten you a private area to take off the helmet,” Steve pointed out. He’d seen to it that Iron Man had nutrition drinks throughout the day, but he suddenly felt guilty that he hadn’t insisted on a hot meal for Iron Man, who had pulled more than his share of the weight for the day.

“No,” Iron Man answered shortly. “Sorry,” he added after a moment.

Steve suppressed a sigh. “I understand.” He _did_ understand – Iron Man had an identity to keep secret, but Steve hoped that one day he would trust his team, trust _Steve_ enough to reveal it. It was hard to be patient when Iron Man was his best friend and Steve didn’t even know his eye color.

“Please, uh, fasten seatbelts and make sure, uuuh, all tray tables and locked and, uh, seats in the upright position,” Clint said, pinching his nose to make his voice nasally, “Flight attendants secure the cabin.”

“Aft cabin secure,” Iron Man drawled in response, to Clint’s obvious delight. He fired the boosters and eased them over water before blasting up into the clouds.

Steve let the silence settle for several minutes. Under his sleeve, his Mark pulsed warmly. He’d been too busy to think about it on the ground – really, he’d always been very good at not thinking about it before he knew who his mate was – but in the stillness and relative silence of the quinjet, Steve couldn’t help but be aware of it. He wondered if Tony was worried about him at all, and then stopped the thought as selfish and dangerous. Besides, even if Tony _was_ worried, all he would have to do was turn on a television to know that Steve was fine, or call his bodyguard for a status check.

Clearing his throat, Steve asked, “Have you heard from T-Mr. Stark?”

Iron Man’s inscrutable faceplate turned to look at him. He waited a beat before answering, “Not since we left the tower. Why?”

“Just wondering,” Steve said awkwardly. “How is he?” he added in a rush, and then continued, “Not that it’s any of my business, but with… Miss Potts…”

“Mrs. Hogan,” Iron Man correct softly.

Steve winced, feeling the same unfounded and useless rage flash through him. He let it go with his next breath and reminded himself, again, that he knew nothing. It was still not uncommon for couples to open up their relationship when one or both found their mates. For all Steve knew, Tony was happily cuddled in between them. The thought made him feel sick with jealousy and deeply lonely.

“Is he alright?” he repeated, equally soft.

“Do you care?” Iron Man asked, sounding curious more than accusatory. When Steve jerked his head up to look at him in startled shock – as if Iron Man knew that they were talking about Steve’s _mate_ and of course he cared – Iron Man continued, “You don’t seem to like my employer much.”

Steve looked away from him. He didn’t know how to respond. He wanted to tell Iron Man about their Marks – he hadn’t told anyone, and of the few friends he had, Iron Man would be the one he _wanted_ to tell – but Iron Man couldn’t be just his friend in the matter. He was Tony’s bodyguard and employee. It wasn’t fair to put him in the middle of it. Steve settled for, “He’s a little hard to get a read on.”

How would Steve have answered the question before he knew about their latent Soulbond? After his first meeting with Tony Stark the cocksure, strutting billionaire who reminded him too much of Howard in all the wrong ways, Steve would have said that he admired and respected Tony’s abilities, but no, he didn’t personally like him much. After their first disastrous lunch appointment to discuss the future of the Avengers Initiative, he would have said that he didn’t like Mr. Stark at all. After the intervening months of negotiations and planning, of watching Tony gradually lower his prickly barriers to give Steve tiny glimpses of a man with a great sense of humor, a sense of responsibility that rivaled Steve’s own, and a heart as big as the Atlantic? He liked _that_ Tony Stark a lot. Unfortunately, that Tony Stark didn’t show up much.

“I wish things were different between him and me,” Steve said finally.

Iron Man didn’t respond, and sat as still as a statue. Steve guessed that he’d fallen asleep and reached up to take a pair of small pillows out of the overhead netting. He gently lifted Iron Man’s head and slid the pillow behind his neck so he had some support. He aborted the absurd notion of draping a blanket over him, and settled his own pillow back against the bulkhead. He yanked his gloves off and followed with his utility belt. Settling down for the trip home, he pulled his sleeve back and stared down at his Mark, twisting his arm so it caught the light. He didn’t take his eyes off of it until they landed at home, carefully rolling the sleeve over it before any of his teammates made it out of their seats.

Shaking Iron Man’s shoulder, Steve called, “You awake, Shell-head?”

It took only the space of a breath for Iron Man to respond, “Yes.”

Steve wondered uneasily if the man had been asleep at all. Being Tony’s bodyguard, he might be familiar with Tony’s Mark. If Iron Man recognized the Mark or already knew, he said nothing. Pushing his bulk off the bench, servos whirring to take the weight, Iron Man stooped to grab Steve’s shield and held it out to him. Steve accepted it with a thank you, but Iron Man didn’t respond. He tromped tiredly out of the jet, and then fired his repulsors from the base of the ramp and took off, curving around the building on a path for Tony’s penthouse entrance. Steve envied him that for one searing moment and then made himself let it go. He helped a groggy Bruce to his feet and ignored Natasha’s sharp gaze as they all hobbled back to their quarters.


	3. War Machine

“Mind if I bum a ride?” Tony asked, angling for the quinjet.

He crashed a little hard next to Steve at the base of the loading ramp, but at least he didn’t land on his ass. Without the stabilizers, Tony wasn’t sure he would have landed upright at all, and honestly he wouldn’t have minded being on his ass just then, except that he wasn’t sure he would have been able to get back up. Steve reached out to steady him. Tony allowed the contact for a second, but just because he was tired, not because Steve was his mate. Not because he was wishing there wasn’t plates of metal and wire in between them.

“Lazy ass,” Clint complained. “You’re late for the ride out, and now you want a ride back?”

Tony was too tired to really feel annoyed, and besides that, Clint sounded just as exhausted. “Next time,” he suggested, “ _You_ do all the heavy lifting, and _I’ll_ fly.” He dropped to the bench with a clatter. His legs felt numb, his entire body ached from being tossed around the suit all day, and his shoulders burned from all the exertion. The suit was as comfortable a nearly-form fitting suit could be, and the servos did a lot of the work for him, but not all of it. He hadn’t been so thoroughly physically exhausted in a long time.

“Hey, you think piloting this thing is so easy, I’ll happily take your suit and we can trade,” Clint suggested. Tony bit his lip so he didn’t respond that piloting the quinjet _was_ easy because he’d designed it to be easy. It was easy compared to any other craft with similar use in any event. Even Rhodey would have had to admit that Clint’s flying had been top notch today, but Tony was way too far gone to watch his words. He made a dismissive noise and Clint let it drop. The whole team was starting to get less unobtrusive about their suggestions that he take off the helmet, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to keep the farce up if they kept pushing it.

Steve sat down beside him, close enough that their arms might have brushed together if not for the suit. Of course, if not for the suit then Steve wouldn’t be anywhere near him.

“You okay?” Steve asked over Clint doing his pre-flight checks.

Tony wasn’t sure how to answer that. He wasn’t okay. In just about every way there was to _be_ okay, he wasn’t okay. “Ready for bed, and something I don’t have to eat through a straw,” he said finally. He’d made a deal with Steve early on in this superhero-ing business: Steve would respect his desire to keep his identity private, but Tony had promised not to lie to him about anything that wouldn’t directly put that security in jeopardy. Tony had done his best to keep the promise, the least of what Steve deserved.

“We could have gotten you a private area to take off the helmet,” Steve said reasonably.

“No,” Tony snapped, growing tired of fending off their attempts. Steve sucked in a startled breath and looked a little hurt. A very tiny, petty part of Tony wanted him to be hurt, but that was only a very tiny part. Most of him ached whenever Steve looked anything other than radiantly happy. “Sorry,” he managed.

“Please, uh, fasten seatbelts and make sure, uuuh, all tray tables and locked and, uh, seats in the upright position,” Clint said, pinching his nose to make his voice nasally, “Flight attendants secure the cabin.”

“Aft cabin secure,” Tony responded because Clint sounded like he was at that point of exhaustion where his sense of humor was the only thing keeping him awake, and Tony would rather not have to fish the quinjet out of the ocean. Clearly pleased to be humored, Clint perked up and eased the quinjet away from the volunteer camp. He maneuvered over water before firing the thrusters and sending them rocketing upward. They sat in awkward silence for several minutes, Steve toying with the edge of one glove.

“Have you heard from T-Mr. Stark?” he asked finally, clearing his throat but not looking at Tony.

Tony hadn’t missed the weird slip and tried to puzzle out his tone. He seemed nervous, and of course he would be if _Iron Man_ had really just been an employee of Mr. Stark. An employee who might be loyal to his employer, might have been told about Steve rejecting him, might hold a grudge. He swallowed back any number of acidic responses before answering, “Not since we left the tower.” He couldn’t help but tack on, “Why?”

Steve shifted his weight restlessly, moving his shoulders as if he couldn’t get comfortable. “Just wondering.” He drew in a breath, let it go, and then started again in a rush, “How is he? Not that it’s any of my business, but with… Miss Potts…” He gave Tony a sideways look, half hopeful, half something else.

“Mrs. Hogan,” Tony corrected softly, but he didn’t blame Steve for the slip. He had to keep reminding himself and he’d watched them together for over a year.

“Is he alright?” Steve repeated after a nod to acknowledge his mistake. His tone stubborn, but not pushy.

Tony wasn’t sure how to interpret that. Steve sounded like he wanted to know. “Do you care?” he asked. As much as he’d wanted to rail at Steve for rejecting him, wanted to make it about _him_ , he couldn’t deny that Steve had been nothing but polite with his rejection. He’d tried to let Tony down as easily as possibly, and he could have a hundred reasons why he didn’t want to form their bond. Everything from not being attracted to men, to still being in mourning over his friends and family, Peggy. Tony couldn’t even blame him, but he did continue, “You don’t seem to like my employer much.”

Steve’s expression went hard and tight. Tony wished he could read minds, just for that moment. He wanted to know what it was about him that turned Steve so far off that he wasn’t even willing to _try_ for a soulbond, when three-quarters of the planet would kill for the chance. He wanted to know what it was about him that was so impossible to reconcile. Steve’s jaw clenched several times like he was gnawing on wood chips.

“He’s a little hard to get a read on,” he said finally, unhelpfully.

Tony struggled with how to respond. It was on the tip of his tongue to say that, as Mr. Stark’s chief confidant, perhaps he could cast some light on his behavior, could help Steve ‘get a read on’ him, if he would just explain what he didn’t get, didn’t like, couldn’t see past. Tony had to forcefully swallow the words back. He’d never been more tempted to use his anonymity as Iron Man to get information about how someone felt about him. He imagined that most people would either lie to him, as the well-known right hand man of the boss, or feel like confiding all the worst things. Tony’s ego might have been larger than some small countries, but he didn’t want to open himself up as that kind of confidant.

“I wish things were different between him and me,” Steve said after a long bout of silence.

Tony said nothing. What could he have said? _So do I_? _What would it take to make things different? Maybe you should give him a chance?_ The situation and his own fatigue was nearly enough to send him into peals of mad laughter. Steve stared at him uncertainly for several seconds, and then rose and collected a pair of travel pillows. Tony was too shocked to move when Steve gently lifted his head away from the bulkhead and slid the pillow behind his neck. Not many people thought of his comfort when he was in the suit – himself included – but the pillow did help.

Steve stripped off his gloves and utility belt before he sat back down. The angle he’d set Tony’s head to was comfortable, but it meant that he was staring right at Steve and couldn’t move without giving away that he was awake. He could have turned the display off, or asked Jarvis to stream Netflix for him, but he was too far gone for that. Steve sat down beside him again and pulled one sleeve back. He rubbed the pad of his thumb over his Mark, staring at it. Tony could feel his own Mark pulsing warmly in his gauntlet. It wasn’t a real reaction, but it felt real enough. Tony wondered what Steve thought when he looked at it. Regret, maybe? Anger that it hadn’t been Peggy or Bucky? Disappointment?

Whatever Steve felt, he gave none of it away. They landed smoothly and Steve quickly rolled his sleeve down, hiding it from the others as they got out of their seats. Natasha stopped by Bruce’s bench to shake him gently awake, and Clint fled through the loading ramp before the engines had even fully stopped. SI techs were already on site to give the jet a thorough post-mission going over, and Clint would doubtlessly be back at the break of dawn to go over it himself. Steve didn’t even seem to notice. He reached over and put a hand on Tony’s shoulder.

“You awake, Shell-head?” he asked.

Tony responded immediately with, “Yes.” He cursed himself as Steve’s gaze turned uneasy, no doubt wondering if Tony had been asleep at all – and, of course, he hadn’t been. Tony stood quickly, the suit doing the majority of the work to get him upright, and scooped up Steve’s shield. He resisted the urge to just stand there and stare at it – Steve had been (probably rightfully) unwilling to hand it over to _Tony_ , but he’d never complained about _Iron Man_ picking it up. Still, Tony didn’t want to push his luck. He handed it off, said nothing when Steve thanked him, and retreated like a coward, leaving Steve standing silently at the base of the loading ramp.

~*~

“Colonel Rhodes is in the Iron Man workshop,” Jarvis warned him once Tony stepped into the rooftop elevator. Rhodey, Happy, and Pepper were the only ones who could get into the Iron Man workshop without causing seriously noticeable damage to the building, but he had a secret identity to keep, and keeping secret identities secret meant not letting people sneak up on him. No scenes of “Oh, hey, Rhodey – well, Clint, this is awkward,” were in his future.

“Thanks,” Tony said, but he waited until the elevator had opened and he’d confirmed that Rhodey was alone before stepping out the suit. He considered pretending to be hurt so Rhodey would put an arm around his waist and support him over to the couch, but he wasn’t sixteen anymore.

Rhodey crossed the workshop floor and put both hands on Tony’s neck, thumbs fitting into the hollow behind his ears. Tony reached up to hold his wrists, leaned into him subtly, and, God, he was tired. If Rhodey stayed where he was, Tony would probably fall asleep on his chest. Another thing he hadn’t done since he was sixteen, and passing out against him in Afghanistan didn’t count.

“You okay, Tones?”

 _No._ “Yeah. Gave the suit a workout today.” He stepped out from between Rhodey’s hands and angled for the workshop shower. Despite the best efforts of his engineering genius in creating an isolated environment inside the suit, he still felt grimy and oily. He peeled the undersuit off one shoulder at a time, unmindful of Rhodey’s eyes on his skin. He’d seen worse. “You see the press release?”

“You stayed on script,” Rhodey observed, but rather than sounding proud, he sounded worried. There was just no pleasing some people. “And your Tweet earlier was very. Normal.”

“I can do _normal_ ,” Tony defended, kicking the suit off and climbing into the stall. It was just wide enough for one, shoehorned in between the shop sink and a metal locker with a gym bag and a Tony Stark Suit for emergencies. Despite that, it still had three shower heads and heated tile floors. Form didn’t always need to give away to function, and besides, sometimes he worked with chemicals. Chemical showers were important. Tony flicked the water on, dancing through the three seconds of chill before the water heated to a perfect 105 degrees. He leaned into it, letting the streams beat the aches out of him.

“Normally when you do _normal_ , there’s a very non-normal reason for it,” Rhodey pointed out after a moment. Tony followed his voice as he moved across the workshop to the mini fridge and started pulling glass bottles out. What Tony wouldn’t give for a beer. “That was pretty impressive work with the oil tanker,” Rhodey continued, shouting over the pulse of the shower jets. “I would have come out, but by the time I heard about it, you looked like you had it under control.”

Tony made a non-committal noise and reluctantly flicked the water off. He spent a few seconds just breathing in the steam before stepping out of the shower. He had a nice towel on the rack next to his ratty old bathrobe, and took a moment to sluice off the worst of the water before sliding into the robe. It was threadbare, and it had a gaping hole over his left hip that let in a draft, but it covered the dangly bits and it reminded him of his first workshop in the basement of their apartment complex that weird first year after college while Dad still thought that ‘you’re cut off’ was a viable Toe-the-Line-or-Else threat.

“Chinese food,” Rhodey announced, pointing him over to the workshop table. He’d cleared it off, and it looked like he’d even wiped it down before setting out paper placemats. A dozen takeout containers were set neatly in between the two place settings, steam still wafting off the tops. An open ginger beer sat at Tony’s place next to a pair of chopsticks and a fortune cookie.

“Marry me,” Tony gushed in response. He leaned carefully into the stool and scooted himself onto the seat. His hips were starting to ache now that he was out of the suit, and he was going to be stiff in the morning.

“Not even if you paid me,” Rhodey deadpanned.

“That was _one time_ ,” Tony complained around a mouthful of eggroll, “Offer to pay a guy to marry you _one time_ , and it never goes away.”

Rhodey snorted. He brought Tony a napkin and took his seat, breaking his chopsticks apart and scraping them together to shave off the splinters. Tony watched him poke through the containers until he finally, predictably, settled on the pepper beef. They ate in silence for several minutes, Tony inhaling his food once his stomach realized that it had access to solids, and _carbs_ , and started clamoring for as much as he could stuff down his throat in that 20 minute window before his brain realized he was full.

“Wanna stay up until three in the morning and watch Gossip Girls and eat gummy worms?” Tony asked, setting his third container down and looking up at Rhodey through his lashes.

“Sure. Since it 2:47, I think that sounds like a great plan.”

Tony winced and glanced up at the clock. “Shoulda said five,” he muttered.

Rhodey grinned at him. “We can watch Gossip Girls until the sun comes up, but we’re doing it from your bed. I am not falling asleep on that ridiculous couch again.”

Tony smiled back, but he knew he would be asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, and then Rhodey would be free to watch Jersey Shore until the jetlag caught up with him.

~*~

Rhodey was regrettably not in bed when Tony woke up, but since it was almost three in the afternoon, he was prepared to not mention it. When Rhodey appeared at the foot of the bed ten minutes later with a homemade breakfast sandwich and a mug of coffee, Tony decided that bygones could be bygones and Rhodey was forgiven. He pushed himself upright, pulling his legs in so Rhodey had room to sit down, and reached for the coffee first. Priorities. It was just warm enough to feel good on his hands, but cool enough that he could gulp it down.

“There’s a reason I proposed to you,” he said once he’d drained half the mug.

Rhodey hiked an eyebrow at him and replaced the mug with the plate. “Alright,” he said, resting the mug on his knee with the handle turned toward Tony, because Rhodey was the best human being on the planet, “Who is it?”

Tony bit into the sandwich. The yolk broke and made little _plopping_ noises as it hit the plate. It was just as amazing as he remembered from college. He looked up at Rhodey, doing his best not to soak his goatee in egg yolk with middling success. “Whoswhat?” he asked with his mouth full.

“That’s the second time in the last twenty-four hours that you’ve mentioned the time we almost got married. So who is it that you’re stuck on?”

“Not stuck on anyone,” Tony lied, using the sandwich as cover. He sopped up some of the spilled yolk with the second half of the sandwich and took another big bite to keep his mouth full. Rhodey wasn’t fooled in the least by the tactic, but Tony swallowed down the last of it and pushed the plate into Rhodey’s hands before he could press the issue, shoving the blankets away in the process.

“I have something to show you,” he said, genuine excitement flooding into his voice. Rhodey let out a slow breath behind him, too quiet to be a sigh, and that meant he was worried but trying not to be pushy. Tony considered telling him then, because it would be nice for _someone_ to know, and Rhodey would keep his secret. But Rhodey needed to be free of any emotional bias if Steve had to tap him for the Initiative, and he could mamma bear with the best of them. “I mean it – you’re going to like this.”

Rhodey followed him from the bedroom, through the kitchen, and back to the elevator. Tony was in nothing but his boxers and a tank top, and he wished he’d stopped to grab a pair of socks. The workshop floor was cold.

“Before we get down there,” Rhodey said, crossing his arms while Tony rubbed the bottom of his left foot on his right calf, “Is this the kind of a surprise that is going to put me on Pepper’s shitlist?”

“No…?” Tony guessed.

Rhodey sighed again, a huge, dramatic gust of air.

“You’ll like it,” Tony promised. He was a honestly surprised that he hadn’t thought about it all between landing on the pad and falling asleep to the steady rise and fall of Rhodey’s breath. The elevator _ding_ ’ed open on the workshop and Tony cast a cursory glance around the room to make sure all was well on the home front. He patted Dum-E on the head he passed and listened to Rhodey chatting with the bot as he keyed the Iron Man workshop open.

“Jarvis, cue me up something suitably dramatic for The Reveal,” Tony said, hoping up on test platform. Low music full of bass and slowly mounting strings skittered around the room as Rhodey followed him into the workshop and stopped just inside the door. He crossed his arms over his chest again and waited, one eyebrow hiked up his forehead. He was trying to play stern, but his eyes were bright with excitement and he was doing a poor job hiding his smile.

“Come here,” Tony coaxed, gesturing him over. “Rhodey, seriously. You won’t even have to go the hospital this time, promise. Just come here.”

Rhodey left his post by the door after another second of I-Know-You’re-Full-of-Shit-Look # 2™ just so Tony knew he wasn’t getting away with anything. He stepped onto the platform and Tony took him by both arms, steering him into the middle.

“Tony –”

“You’re going to want to be _very still_ ,” Tony stressed as he stepped down. Rhodey froze, because whatever he liked to say, he trusted Tony with his life. “Let him have it, J.”

Bay #3 opened, and his newest suit was visible for a pair of heartbeats before the metal started flying. Tony had worked out the kinks from his own – painful – initial experiment, and the silver plates folded gently around Rhodey while the platform rotated. The hand repulsors fired last, lifting Rhodey up just enough for the boots to slip under him, and then dropped him back to the platform with a satisfying _boom_. He landed with barely a wobble, and was silent for several seconds. The suit was heavier than Iron Man, more bulky in the shoulders and the chest, the faceplate was more angular. He’d meant for it to be intimidating, but it was surprisingly more than he expected with Rhodey inside the shell, all the subtle movements of a person in control giving it life.

The moments stretched, and Tony was just starting to worry when the faceplate popped up. Rhodey was grinning so wide that it looked painful. The planes of his face were lit up blue with the glow of the HUD.

“You built me a suit.”

Tony grinned back. “I call him War Machine. Wanna test it out?”

“Just see if you can keep up.”


	4. Crude Oil

_Roxxon stock dips another three points today as the clean-up of last week’s oil spill continues. Hundreds of volunteers have flocked to the scene of the spill to assist in efforts to save local wildlife and clean up the beach._

[On screen: Volunteers bathing oil-coated seabirds]

_Prominent New York superheroes, The Avengers, have appeared almost daily on the beach to aid volunteers and raise awareness for the tragedy, while a GoFundMe launched by Tony Stark with a pledge to match contributions up to two hundred thousand dollars has already reached nearly a million dollars, and is providing a much needed source of support for what promises to be a lengthy project._

[On screen: Iron Man harnessed to a large bucket, scooping oil out of the water. Steve Rogers sealing a 50-gallon oil drum.]

~*~

Steve stepped into the shower with his eyes closed and held his breath as he moved directly under the spray. The water was just shy of scalding as it sluiced over his skin. He stayed under until his lungs burned, and then another slow five count until his head started to swim. Taking a step back, he gasped in a hasty lungful of steam, but he could still taste the oil in the air. Natasha had wordlessly handed him a large pump-bottle of Fast Orange after the first day of oil clean-up. It was a pumice based cleanser that left him scrubbed raw and smelling pungently of orange, but his usual body wash was no match for the oil.

He pumped out a handful and scrubbed vigorously at his face and neck, holding his breath against the hiss of discomfort when the hot water hit the abrasions left behind. His skin tingled with brief bursts of fire as it healed, and he went over every inch of his skin twice to get the oil out of his pores. Among all the other changes, the serum had enhanced his senses to the upper limit of human levels, and he would never be able to sleep with the crude oil still clinging to his body. The orange scent was overwhelming, but at least comparatively pleasant.

Skin still tender from the combination of heat and exfoliation, Steve crawled into bed naked and tried to let the stress of the day go so he could sleep. They were all putting in double shifts with their usual rotations, rebuilding the city, and training on top of spending whatever time they could at the site of the oil spill. He could handle the physical strain without much difficulty, but it was mentally and emotionally draining work. The dead animals washing up on the beach were enough to break his heart, and capturing the oil-coated, panicking, and sick animals that had survived was almost worse.

“You’re looking pink in the cheeks,” Iron Man observed when Steve finally gave up on sleep and wandered back out into the common room in a tank top and shorts.

Steve jolted in surprise. It wasn’t that it was uncommon to find one of the Avengers in the commons room in the middle of the night, but he couldn’t remember ever coming across Iron Man after hours. He technically had a bedroom on the floor, but as far as Steve knew, he’d never even stepped foot into it. He had a whole life outside the tower with a home to go back to, maybe a family, children, a spouse. He probably had a car parked in the employee parking lot. He got to take the suit off at the end of the day, punch out, and go home with no one the wiser. He could stand right next to anyone on the subway or train and they would never know that he was a part-time superhero.

For a moment, Steve was filled with a flood of jealousy so strong and unexpected that he couldn’t respond to Iron Man’s greeting at all. Iron Man tipped his head minutely to one side as if examining him and Steve shook the uncharitable emotion off. He didn’t begrudge Iron Man his home, his relatively normal life.

“Sorry,” Steve said. “You caught me off guard. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be up.” He crossed the room to the kitchen and started rustling through the fridge. He peered curiously around the door at the back of Iron Man’s head. He was sitting on the couch, but the TV was off, and he wasn’t holding anything. His suit was cleaned to a museum polish, and Steve envied that a little as well. He wondered if he could handle a run through the suit washer as he pulled the milk out. He’d never examined the inside of it, but it sure pumped out a lot of steam in the three minutes it took Iron Man to go from oil-coated to shiny. Steve reluctantly dismissed the idea - It might be too hot for even his accelerated healing to handle.

“Want a milkshake?” he asked, selecting a carton of chocolate ice cream. Half of the freezer was dedicated to frozen treats in one variety or the other, as they went through them quickly and everyone liked different things. He preferred boring chocolate himself, but Bruce had coconut gelato they all left alone, Natasha had a rum raisin ice cream that no one else seemed to like, and Clint dug into anything that wouldn’t get his fingers chopped off when it went missing.

Iron Man didn’t respond right away and Steve was just readying himself to ask more loudly when he pushed himself off the couch and crossed behind it to the breakfast bar. He sat gingerly on one of the barstools and leaned over to watch Steve scooping chocolate ice cream into the blender.

“Anything caramel?” he asked after a moment.

Steve ran through a quick inventory of what they had on hand. “I don’t think there’s caramel ice cream, but there’s a sweet cream in there that I can add a caramel sauce to if you like,” he offered.

“Sure,” Iron Man answered readily. Steve abandoned the ice cream to soften up and pulled a sauce pan out of one cupboard, the sugar and condensed milk out of another, and a stick of butter from the fridge.

“What are you doing?” Iron Man asked once Steve had the burner on with cubes of butter in the pan.

Steve glanced at him over one shoulder with his eyebrow lifted, nudging the butter cubes with a wooden spoon. “Making caramel sauce.”

After a beat, Iron Man repeated, “ _Making_ caramel sauce?”

“Well, sure. It’s easy and it tastes better than what you get from the grocery store.” He swirled the pan to help the butter melt. He hated that he couldn’t see Iron Man’s face and had no idea what he thought of Steve making caramel sauce, or if he was paying attention at all. He had a computer two inches from his nose and could have been watching YouTube videos of kittens and ducklings for all Steve could guess.

“You’re unbelievable,” he said finally, his tone falling oddly between resignation and awe. The barstool creaked as he slid off of it and moved around the kitchen island. While Steve added the sugar and condensed milk to the pan, Iron Man finished scooping Steve’s ice cream into the blender. He added the milk, covered it, and used his pinkie finger to push the button.

“This needs to be voice activated,” he muttered sourly when he pushed the wrong button and it turned on high, squealing as the motor choked. Steve pulled the sauce pan off the stove so it wouldn’t burn while he wasn’t looking and held it out in one hand. He reached under Iron Man’s arm with the other hand, startling him into taking half a step back, and pushed the correct button. “Thanks,” Iron Man said gruffly, tone still strange, almost as if he were angry. Not being able to activate a blender might be enough to annoy anyone though, so Steve tried not to read too much into it.

“I bet Mr. Stark could make it voice activated for you,” Steve said in what he hoped was a casual tone of voice. He hadn’t seen Tony face-to-face since the hammer blow of discovering their matching Marks. Steve wanted badly to know how he was doing, but he’d been allegedly sealed up in the workshop for the past three weeks, and Iron Man had not been very forthcoming with details whenever Steve tried to gently broach the subject.

“No doubt,” Iron Man said stiffly. “I’m surprised he hasn’t already. Where did this come from? Walmart?”

Steve shrugged. “It was here when we moved in.” Setting the caramel aside to cool, Steve took two tall glasses out of the cupboard, and then added a pair of pink bendy straws. Muttering too low for the vocal processors to make out words, Iron Man managed to get the blender to turn off and poured the milkshake into one of the glasses. It was thinner than Steve would have made for himself, but he thanked his teammate and popped the straw in the glass while Iron Man rinsed the blender cup out.

He wanted to ask a dozen questions about Tony Stark, and he wanted to tell his friend about the Mark burning away at his wrist, and he wanted most of all not to have the same debate every time he and Iron Man were alone in a room. He used the distraction of putting the second milkshake together to stop himself from blurting out something he might regret. He’d never been very good at holding his tongue when he had something to say, and he didn’t like feeling like he had to mind every word around his friend. He resented it, and felt guilty for the resentment when it wasn’t Iron Man’s fault.

They took their milkshakes to the couch without a word, and by silent, mutual agreement, turned on the television. Steve clicked through the channels listlessly, bypassing his usual go-to of Food Network for late night background noise. Most nights, a Food Network marathon ended up with him turning the kitchen into a disaster as he tried to keep up with a competition or follow along to whatever delicious and more-complicated-than-it-looks recipe of the night. He paused briefly on Animal Planet, but quickly recognized it as an animal control show, and shuddered as he moved on. He couldn’t understand the way some people treated their pets on a good day, and it would be more than he take after a day of collecting tiny lifelessly bodies off the beach.

Iron Man, sipping at his milkshake through a slit in the faceplate, let him channel surf for another five minutes before holding his hand out for the remote. Steve surrendered it readily, but Iron Man just set it down and released the straw with a wet _pop_. Steve couldn’t help peering at the slit in the faceplate as the straw withdrew for the tiniest glimpse of his friend, an idea of his skin color or the shape of his lips. It was useless, the slit cast in such dark shadow that the helmet may as well have been empty.

“Have you seen the Star-Trifecta?” Iron Man asked, clarifying with, “Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate?”

“Those are different things?” Steve asked innocently. Iron Man’s head snapped around to face him, and Steve could almost _feel_ his eyes bulging and jaw dropping open. He’d gotten Bruce and Clint (separately) with the same line, and couldn’t help the smile that crept across his lips at Iron Man’s telling silence.

“Star Wars and Star Trek were in my SHIELD pop culture briefing,” he said finally. He’d had a lot to read up on in those first days after the battle when he was still in limbo, the fate of the Avengers Initiative undecided, and Steve’s own future uncertain. They’d started him with movies progressing through each decade he’d missed, and Steve had been only too happy to escape reality for a few days, let his mind wander into new worlds instead of hashing over and over Bucky falling from the train, that last kiss with Peggy, the last night with the Commandos, aliens pouring out of a hole in the sky, Iron Man plummeting to Earth.

“And?” Iron Man prompted.

Steve shook himself out of his unpleasant reverie. “I’ve always enjoyed science fiction,” he said. “Though most of it doesn’t seem like fiction anymore. They were both really progressive for their time. I enjoyed them.”

“Have you seen all of them?”

Steve nodded. “I didn’t like DS9 much, so I mostly just read the screenplays. Otherwise they were all good, though Stargate wasn’t in the briefing.”

“A severe oversight,” Iron Man sniffed. He didn’t do anything that Steve could see or hear, but the TV flipped off of the shopping network that had been extoling the benefits of a Sham Wow! And went briefly dark. A moment later, credits started to run. “It started with a movie,” Iron Man explained, “It turned into three television series and a couple made-for-TV movies.”

Steve nodded and chewed idly on his straw through the opening score. Iron Man made a good movie-watching companion. Bucky hadn’t been good for the pictures, mostly. He either fidgeted too much, or ended up turned sideways in his seat to explore the back molars of the girl next to him. Steve’s SHIELD cultural liaison had approached movie watching like an academic course, sitting stiffly beside Steve on an uncomfortable couch, answering questions with too much detail, and occasionally stopping the feature to give Steve a lecture on cultural relevance. Iron Man didn’t talk through the movie, but he responded readily if Steve had a question or made a comment.

Steve’s heart went out for Jack O’Neill, struggling with such unimaginable loss and only duty to keep him upright and breathing. He could relate, but it was Dr. Jackson who he envied, starting a new life on a new planet with his soulmate, all of his problems on Earth just left behind. Steve’s stomach twisted at the thought, but he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t do it if given the chance. He thought about Tony, who was hopefully deeply asleep, and wondered if things would have been different if they’d met when Steve was just out of the ice, if they’d touched their Marks together before either of them knew the other’s identity.

As the ending credits rolled up the screen, Steve heard a huff of breath and a soft snore filter through Iron Man’s vocal processor. He watched Iron Man for several seconds, hesitating to wake him. The man’s chin was tipped to his chest, his hands resting in his lap. He didn’t look comfortable, but they’d all had a long series of long days, and Steve wanted him to get whatever sleep he could. He scooted forward and moved their empty milkshake glasses so he could pull the pillows and blankets out of the chest they used for a coffee table. He arranged one pillow behind Iron Man’s neck, gently moving his head into a more comfortable position, and then wedged a pillow under each elbow and one under his hands. He knew there was no need for it, but he draped a blanket over the man and settled down next to him, feeling better knowing that Iron Man was as comfortable as Steve could make him.

“Jarvis?” Steve asked quietly as the credits ended and the screen went blank. He didn’t talk to the Tower’s AI often, but he didn’t know what Iron Man had done to get the movie to play.

“Yes, Captain Rogers?” Jarvis replied softly, voice pitched so it sounded like he was sitting to Steve’s left, as if he were cognizant of Iron Man sleeping and didn’t want to wake him. With as smart as Jarvis was, maybe he _was_ aware of it.

“Do you have more Stargate available?”

“Would you like to watch Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, Universe, or one of the movies, sir?”

Steve blinked. “Which comes next in sequence?”

“Episode one of the first season of Stargate SG-1. Would you like me to play it for you?”

“Yes, please. Thank you,” Steve added.

“You’re welcome, Captain.”

The lights in the kitchen dimmed without him asking and the first scene rolled on the screen. “Jarvis?” Steve prompted after several minutes, waiting for the AI to respond before offering, “You can call me Steve. If you want.”

Steve felt his cheeks warm, and he wasn’t sure why he was embarrassed, or if Jarvis could change the way he addressed people at all, though if Steve could convince the “personal assistant” on his phone to call him by his first name, he didn’t see why Jarvis couldn’t.

“I will do so gladly, Steve. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, thank you,” Steve answered politely, feeling lighter, and as if he’d made a friend. He remained side-by-side with Iron Man for another four episodes before he finally dropped off to sleep himself.

~*~

“Did I wake up in an alternate universe?” Clint asked, stopping in the hallway and blinking owlishly at Tony. He was dressed in lavender pajama bottoms and a gray t-shirt with a dark purple collar, his hair was sticking up in every direction, and he was barefoot. Tony snorted when he noticed that Clint’s toenails were painted in alternating shades of lavender and violet, but he didn’t say anything. He used to paint his cherry red whenever he was upset, and fuchsia or black when he wanted to piss off Dad.

“Are you actually here, Shell-head, or am I still sleeping?” Clint asked when Tony didn’t respond to him.

“If you were still sleeping, I would probably be naked,” Tony pointed out.

Clint shrugged. “That’s true.” He stretched, scratching at his sides and yawning as he stumbled through the living room. He came to a halt at the edge of the couch and frowned down at Steve, still sleeping. Tony had woken to find Steve curled against his shoulder. He’d been sore from the extremely bad decision to stay in the suit after spending all day scooping oil out of the ocean. Sleeping in it certainly hadn’t helped at all, but Tony had remained there for another half an hour, just to watch Steve’s chest rise and fall. It was unsurprisingly easy to spend time with him as long as he was in the suit.

Tony hadn’t been expecting to run into anyone when he’d decided to take the elevator to the Avenger’s floor rather than the Penthouse. He technically had a room on the floor, but he would have had to pass both of the superspies’ room to get there, and would have been right across the hall from Steve. All of his teammates were light sleepers with the possible exception of Bruce, and Tony hadn’t wanted to draw attention to himself. He’d hovered uncertainly in the living room for the better part of five minutes, not ready to see his seldom slept-in bed in the master suite, and for once not willing to spend the night in the workshop.

When Steve had found him on the couch, he’d meant to get up and leave, but the allure of spending time with him had been too painful for a masochist to pass up. He could easily see it becoming a trend – staying in the suit long after it had started to get uncomfortable just to spend time with his mate, who otherwise wouldn’t have anything to do with him. It was a terrible lie, and an even worse idea, but if there was anything that Tony Stark was good at, it was bad ideas. Tony shuddered and turned away so he couldn’t see Steve’s feet hanging over the edge of the couch.

“Come turn this on,” he ordered, getting Clint’s attention. He’d filled the blender with fresh fruit and spinach for a drinkable breakfast. His plan had been to find a chopstick, but Clint was conveniently close, and it meant not having to use a spatula to open the drawers. The practicality issue of trying to move around a kitchen in the suit was one he hadn’t encountered before – the workshop and Penthouse were designed to be voice-activated and overall suit friendly.

Clint gave him a funny look, but he climbed onto a barstool, got to his knees, and leaned over the breakfast bar to turn the blender on liquefy. Tony stood by to turn it off, but Clint took charge of the blender, turning it around so he had better access.

“Bet if you asked nicely your boss would make this place more Iron Man accessible,” he said, eyes flickering up in the direction of Tony’s face. He turned the blender off and opened the lid to check the consistency. “Maybe you could spend more time here,” he tacked on too-casually, turning the blender back on before Tony could make an excuse for never spending time with the Avengers outside of duty.

“Do the accessibility mods work for you?” Tony asked once the blender was quiet again. He’d been curious, but he couldn’t approach Clint as Tony Stark and expect an honest answer out of him. It seemed like a good time to find out if there was anything he needed to change, anything he could improve.

Clint nodded. “Sure. Jarvis can project text onto most surfaces or flash lights at me if someone is trying to get my attention when I don’t have my hearing aids in, all the alarms and timers have flashing lights, the phones are all video-capable, mirrors everywhere. It’s good.”

Tony hesitated, but asked, “Are you okay with me?”

Clint frowned uncertainly. “Did you just ask if I was okay with you?” When Tony nodded, he asked, “Any reason why I shouldn’t be?”

There was at least one really big reason, but Tony clarified, “I meant do you understand me okay?”

“It would be better if I could see your lips, not gonna lie,” Clint said, “But as long as I have my hearing aids or comm unit in, it’s usually fine.”

 _Usually fine_ didn’t work for Tony. He’d gone to significant lengths to make the whole tower more accessible to Clint, adding dozens of other accessibility-related features for his employees along the way, and had left a huge oversight right on his own body. He called up the controls for the suit’s external lights with a mental command, and flared his eyelights. A bright blue flash bathed the counter, and Clint jerked, looking up at him in surprise.

Turning the external speakers off, Tony accessed Jarvis’ language commands. “Translate into Morse code, and that into flashing lights,” he ordered. _Hello_.

Clint narrowed his eyes, eyebrows drawing in suspiciously, lips pulling tight. Tony tried again, slowing the speed.

A smile flashed over Clint’s face and he laughed. “Most polite greeting I think I’ve ever gotten from you, Tin Britches,” he said.

 _Fuck off Bird-brain_.

Clint cheerfully gave him a middle finger, but he was practically glowing with pleasure and surprise. Tony felt smug for doing something right and annoyed that he hadn’t thought of it earlier. Undocking the blender cup from the base, Clint sloshed the smoothie around and pronounced it _liquid-y._ Tony retrieved a glass from the cupboard, and then pulled down a second and offered it to Clint questioningly.

“Thanks, but I eat _real_ food for breakfast.”

Tony flipped him off, and Clint stuck his tongue out. Tony had gotten used to the green drinks and protein smoothies over the years since he’d made the decision to keep Iron Man’s identity a secret, but he couldn’t help being envious when Clint started pulling eggs and bacon out of the fridge. Tony finished his breakfast before Steve woke, and that was likely as close as he was ever going to get to a Sign From Above to quit while he was ahead. He rinsed out his glass and the blender, and then waved to Clint.

“Don’t be a stranger!” Clint called as he crossed the living room. Tony waved over his shoulder again and didn’t stop to turn around. As easy as it would be to use the suit to trick Steve into spending time with him, it would be just as easy with the rest of the team. Clint’s opinion on Tony Stark was no secret, and tricking him into befriending Iron Man when he didn’t like the man in the suit felt every bit as slick and toxic as crude oil. The cheerfulness in Clint’s voice was as good as a slap in the face as the elevator doors closed behind him and Tony was reminded, again, why he’d decided not get too close to his teammates.

Stepping out of the suit felt like heaven. He’d designed the armor to be a livable environment for days if necessary, so it was just an illusion that the air was fresher on the outside, but he still took in big gulps of it as he walked around the workshop. A shower was definitely in order, and then he had another suit to put on, and a day pretending that he was still just an engineering genius with a nose for business and a bad attitude. He put aside all thoughts of sending Steve an invitation from Iron Man for more Stargate, and got back in the elevator.

“Penthouse,” he called wearily, suddenly feeling twice his age, and stupidly, bitingly lonely.

~*~

It was inevitable that they would see each other again. They’d managed to mutually avoid each other for over a month, but Steve was still the leader of the superhero team that lived in his building, and Tony was still their patron. Tony looked unhappily between the monitor and the concealed door that would lead to his Iron Man workshop. Steve still had four stories to go before he would be at the workshop door. Tony could slip into the hidden workshop, climb into the suit, tell Steve that _Mr. Stark just stepped out, no I’m not sure when he’ll be back_. It might work, or Steve might hint again at another movie night, or he might ask Iron Man if he wanted to go to a charity event with him, or accompany him on his twenty-two mile run, or visit that new smoothie place that had just opened up a few (fifteen) blocks away.

The irony of it was that it was perfect. Steve was everything he could have ever wanted in a mate, a perfect match for Tony’s temperament, happy doing the most simple things if it just meant spending time together, awed by the slightest gesture, and perfectly capable of standing up to Tony even when he was in the worst of his moods. It was exactly what he wanted and he couldn’t have it because Steve didn’t realize it was _him_. Since the Stargate night, Steve had gone out of his way to track Iron Man down when they weren’t on duty, always with a perfect reasonable excuse, and since they were talking, did he feel like lunch? It physically hurt to keep coming up with excuses, and the best excuses were always the worst – _my boss is an asshole and I already give up a lot of time he pays me for to help the Avengers_.

Tony had been expecting Steve to give up on Iron Man for weeks, but he only seemed to be getting more determined the longer Tony put him off. Tony was only human, and he _liked_ Steve for more than just the Mark burning on his skin. He wanted to see him. Steve was making it too easy and Tony would give in eventually, and where would that leave him? Someone was going to learn his secret eventually – he was a big believer of the inevitability theory – and Steve would feel hurt, and cheated, and lied to. Tony couldn’t think of much else he wanted less than that; Steve was going to feel that way no matter what, but it would be worse if he thought of Iron Man as his friend.

The elevator chimed as it opened into the entryway. Tony’s security monitor flashed red around the edges. Jarvis performed the programed check, and the monitor turned blue. Steve waited patiently at the door, eyes flickering over the artwork. Tony would have been just as happy with a plain concrete room, Spartan Industrialism, but Pepper could barely help herself when it came to blank wall space.

“Sir,” Jarvis prompted after a minute turned into three, “Steve is at the door.”

Tony glared at the screen, helplessly petulant. He’d been shocked the first time Jarvis had said ‘Steve,’ and when Tony reminded him that it was _Captain Rogers_ , Jarvis had primly informed him that Steve had specifically given permission for Jarvis to address him by his first name.

“Shall I tell him that you are indisposed?”

That was a thought. He did time and attention sensitive things in the workshop all the time. It wouldn’t be strange at all for him to lock everyone out for a few days…years…

“No,” Tony said with a sigh. Steve would come back, and according to Jarvis’ pointedly illuminated calendar, he had requested the meeting over two weeks before. “Let him in.”

“Mr. Stark,” Steve greeted with stiff formality. He had his Captain America voice on, shoulders straight, eyes front. If he’d had a gut, he would have sucked it in. “Thank you for seeing me.” His voice ended on an awkward note, as if he’d meant to say more but decided against it at the last breath.

“You do have an appointment, Captain,” Tony said, trying to keep his voice even, but the words tasted a little sharp in the air. Steve’s lips briefly compressed and then relaxed. “What can I do for you?”

Steve hovered just inside the door, looking briefly to the other chairs scattered around the lab, over to Tony, and then down to the floor. It would have been polite for Tony to offer him a seat, and he usually did – they’d done this regularly in the months of getting the Initiative off the ground and away from both SHIELD and the WSC. Tony considered making him stand at the door, just because he could, and maybe Steve would say his piece and leave a little sooner if he did.

Grunting, he gestured to a chair. Steve’s knees unlocked and he took it in one big hand, pushing it across the lab so he could sit opposite Tony at his current workstation. Tony made a show of leaning over the table to stare into the guts of his latest StarkPhone through a magnifying lens. He touched the soldering iron gently to it so he wouldn’t have to pay attention to Steve settling himself at the table. Steve was quiet for so long that Tony started to lose track of him, and several minutes went by before he straightened up, pulling the iron away from the circuit board.

“I wanted to speak with you about some technology,” Steve said, getting the words in before Tony dove back into his project. Tony was both impressed and stupidly touched that Steve had waited until he didn’t have a soldering iron over an expensive and important piece of SI tech before speaking. Most of the few people who made it into his workshop tended to just launch into whatever it was they wanted, and that was fine, Tony was very good at multitasking (and ignoring people), but Steve’s consideration was nice.

Handing the soldering iron to U, Tony pushed the magnifying lens away. “You’ve come to the right place,” he said, spreading his hands and summoning a smile up from that place he reserved for press events and charity functions.

“Iron Man has recently started communicating with Clint through the lights in the faceplate,” Steve explained. Tony bit his lip before he said something like _no shit?_ Or _how does Clint like that?_ “It’s made me realize how much we need a means of reliable, silent communication. Not just for Clint, though it makes sense if we run into an emergency, but for all of us. There will be situations where we might not be able to speak, but will be too far apart to use signs. I was hoping you might have some ideas.”

Tony considered it. He was technically on consulting hours, and technically the Avengers retained his services when necessary. It was also the kind of problem he liked to work on, and he’d been itching for an excuse to improve a subvocal mic for years. “I might be able to come up with something. Any particular requirements?”

“Preferably something completely silent, but at least something that wouldn’t carry above five decibels outside of the ear, and could pick up the softest utterance.”

“Completely silent,” Tony mused. “Probably flickering lights won’t suit your needs if you’re looking for stealth.”

Steve answered him, but Tony didn’t pay enough attention to pick it out. He hopped off his stool, shoo’ing at Butterfingers. “Out of the way, move, you’re burning up Cap’s consulting hour.”

Crossing the lab, he called up a holographic workspace and pushed away the clutter, hastily shoving a voice-activated blender out of the way before Steve had moved to the right angle to see it, trashing a failed bit of ‘I’m bored’ architectural engineering, and saving three other projects so he could get them out of the way. He patted his pants down in search of a stylus, spinning in a half circle. He must have hundreds of them, but they were the workshop equivalent of socks, and Tony was beginning to suspect that the bots were playing Pick Up Sticks with them. Steve pointed to his head after ten seconds of searching and Tony snatched the stylus from behind his ear, ignoring Steve’s stifled smile in the process.

“Right. How do you feel about a tactile solution?”

“Depends on what you mean,” Steve answered, watching him avidly as he started sketching in the air. “I can’t take any kind of implant. My body would reject it.”

Tony glanced at him, certainly not using the statement as an invitation to rake his eyes over the body in question. He grunted, scrapped his first idea, and started over. “A subvocal mic,” Tony said finally, switching his colors as he started laying out the microcircuitry, “That transmits to a device you would wear… somewhere out of the way, but still a sensitive area, around the hips maybe, or just under the pecs…” He brought up a basic human form and sketched a broad band around the figure’s ribs, “That would transmit messages as light electrical pulses.”

“What would be the danger of it shorting out?”

Tony shrugged. “It would have to be relatively small and delicate to fit comfortably under the uniform without restricting movement, but I can reinforce the band and shield the device itself. It would be water proof to… maybe fifty feet, but I can work on that.”

“If it malfunctions, how dangerous would the electrical discharge be?”

“Minimal, nothing worse than a static shock from carpet… most likely. The problem would lie more in making the electrical pulses strong enough to be felt so the message can be clearly understood without being so strong that they’re painful.”

Steve nodded and stepped up to Tony’s side, so close that if Tony swayed just five inches, they would touch. Tony’s hand tightened on the stylus and he took a step away, spinning his rough sketch as he did, and then moving through it as if he needed to get to the opposite side. Steve didn’t seem to notice the retreat, or care if he did.

“What would the range be?”

“Not sure, would have to test it.” He was already running calculations in his head, how much he could boost the signal without doing damage to the wearer, how it would perform under stress, how likely it was to be useful in the field. He could use a variation of Jarvis’ system that translated speech to Morse code to blinking lights, but it wasn’t very practical for Steve’s purposes. He didn’t want it as a way of carrying on a conversation. He wanted it so he could give tactical commands in very specific situations. It might be better if he programed it with specific commands instead of giving it the whole range of syntax. _Hold, left, right, run, XX seconds,_ so on and so forth.

“Put together a list of tactical commands,” Tony said, interrupting Steve in the middle of a sentence. Steve lifted an eyebrow and Tony tried to mentally review the last few seconds, but he’d been too distracted to even passively store away Steve’s words. “What was that?”

Steve shook his head. “Not important, just small talk. What commands?”

Tony hesitated on pushing the matter, but said, “The kinds of commands you think you might need to convey in these hypothetically stealthy emergency situations.”

Nodding, Steve asked, “Anything else you need from me?”

“A guinea pig,” Tony supplied readily. “I’ll corner Iron Man for it,” he amended.

“I’d be happy to volunteer,” Steve said, voice touched with steel and lips going tight again. “He seems busy enough as it is.”

Well, that was bound to happen. Tony could hear the recrimination in Steve’s voice as clearly as if Steve had just shouted _you’re an asshole to your bodyguard and monopolize all of his time_. He tried to think of how he would have approached that statement if Iron Man had just been his employee, but ended up snapping, “I already told you once that he does what he wants.”

Steve winced. “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean for that to sound like a criticism of you. Or him. I appreciate his support and the time he can spare for the Avengers.”

Tony felt both mollified by the apology and annoyed with himself as he continued working, Steve standing silently by to watch. The goal had been to make ‘Tony Stark’ into the unreasonable employer who wouldn’t let Iron Man out to play, not to imply that if Iron Man wasn’t coming out to play it was because he didn’t want to. He’d always known the dual identity would be challenging, but he’d never realized how much it would isolate him. The initial fantasy of anonymity and forming relationships that weren’t tainted by the publically recorded past of Tony Stark had been so thoroughly decimated that he wasn’t sure how he’d ever thought of it as a silver lining.  

“Thank you for your time today, Mr. Stark,” Steve said after it was obvious that they had nothing else to say to each other, firming up his shoulders again and directing his eyes toward the ceiling. He turned to go, but paused, took a breath, and turned back around. “And if you do see Iron Man, would you let him know that I would like to see him if he has some time?”

Shoulders dropping, Tony asked, “Business or pleasure?”

“Pleasure,” Steve answered simply without the slightest hint of embarrassment or hesitation, and no idea what it did to Tony’s insides. “It’s not pressing. I was just planning to start the next series of a show we were watching together.”

The moment stretched and Tony heard himself asking, “Which show?”

Looking surprised, Steve answered, “Stargate. I was starting Atlantis tonight.”

Tony felt an instant desire to tell him that Iron Man would be busy for the rest of the day, but that he would be free in a few hours if Steve wanted company. He bit back on it, not sure that he could handle the awkward _oh, I just forgot that I needed to do something else, nevermind_ , or worse, Steve miserably agreeing out of politeness. The series was something Steve obviously enjoyed, and it was something that was as-yet untainted for Tony. He didn’t want to ruin that with an evening sitting stiffly on opposite ends of the couch, trying to pretend they weren’t uncomfortable around each other.

“I’ll tell him,” Tony said instead, adding, “He might be busy this evening.”

“I understand,” Steve said with a nod. “Thank you again.”


	5. Ozone and green things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one is a little late in the evening. I decided to add more to it before posting. If you read the story originally on tumblr - this chapter will be all new for you!

Four dozen SHIELD agents were already onsite by the time Steve made it to the Walmart parking lot where a massive storm was focusing its attention. He’d been on his run and only three miles away when he noticed the clouds, which had been sullen for days, turning into a familiar funnel. Iron Man was out of town with Tony at a business meeting, but Natasha and Clint were on their way. How SHIELD had beat him to it when he’d sprinted flat-out the moment he saw the clouds coalesce was beyond him, but no one tried to keep him at the perimeter with the press and onlookers, so he wasn’t going to ask. Yet.

“Not even breathing hard,” Phil Coulson observed with one of his perpetually-mysterious smiles as Steve fitted the shield to his arm and dropped his backpack to the pavement.

“You were watching me?”

Coulson shrugged one shoulder and gestured to the alleyway Steve had sprinted down before vaulting the low wall surrounding the parking lot. The length of the alley was visible from Coulson’s location – Steve nodded and looked back to the clouds. He was hopeful that it was just Thor making his promised return, but with their luck, it could just as easily be a recently escaped Loki. Or a rampaging Asgardian monster. Or an invasion. Or a freak tornado that Clint would name Thor just for fun.

“What do you run? A four minute mile?”

“Something like that,” Steve said. When he was really in gear, he got just under three minutes, but he’d learned early on not to divulge information that could be squirreled away in a file if he didn’t have to. He liked Phil Coulson, but the man had participated in the six month ruse surrounding his faked death, and while Steve understood the tactical reason – as underhanded as it had been – he wasn’t fond of being manipulated.

Clint jogged up behind them before the silence could get too awkward. He changed direction at the last moment and chose to put Steve in between him and his former handler.

“Mr. Barton,” Coulson greeted, sounding no different than Steve had ever heard.

Clint signed a short, terse greeting, and nudged Steve to get his attention. _Any idea who’s up there?_

 _Not yet,_ Steve signed back. He could see the comm unit in Clint’s ear, but he never begrudged his teammate whatever method of communication he chose, and Clint obviously didn’t want to include Coulson in their conversation. _Where’s Natasha?_

 _Putting on her makeup,_ Clint signed with an exaggerated eye-roll.

“Don’t be jealous because my eyeliner looks better than yours,” Natasha drawled, coming up on Coulson’s other side. She gave Clint a sideways glance and then flashed her tongue at him. Clint flickered a rude sign at her, and Coulson’s hands moved in between them to sign, _Do I need to separate you two?_

Steve just watched them, not sure how to react to their behavior. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen them act more like teenaged brother and sister than a pair of assassins that people wrote horror stories about, but this seemed different, a subtle dynamic shift that had more to do with Coulson than them. Steve immediately felt like an outsider in their conversation and moved subtly backward, fiddling with the strap of the shied.

 _Already tried that,_ Clint replied, his hands moving a little sharper, fingers tighter, jaw clenched.

 _Clint…_ Coulson tried, using the familiar sign that Steve had only seen Natasha use before. Clint’s reaction was immediate, but cold. He just directed his eyes up to the sky and took a step away from Steve’s side. He hadn’t thought Clint was really the cold shoulder type, but Coulson had been his handler, and his friend. If Steve felt hurt by the ruse after knowing the man for less than a day, he couldn’t imagine what Clint felt over the mess.

Coulson sighed quietly.

“Not yet,” Natasha said softly, and Steve saw Coulson’s short nod out of the corner of his eye.

Feeling like a voyeur on a _very_ private scene, but that walking away would be equally rude, Steve cleared his throat and tried to come up with something to redirect the conversation. He was just about to, really stupidly, ask if Coulson had ever gotten his cards back when the sky helpfully opened u and dumped a sudden deluge on their heads.

“Oh, thank you,” Steve breathed, lifting the shield as a makeshift umbrella and looking up into the rain. He’d asked more than once to be swallowed up, and was grateful that some benevolent trick of timing had finally worked to his advantage.

“Eyes up,” Coulson ordered, holding a hand up to his comm unit, as if every member of his team wasn’t already pointing weapons skyward. The wind picked up, shrieking between the buildings and throwing trash into the air. Lightning flickered through the swirling purple clouds, and then the sky flared bright white and a lance of light speared down into the parking lot. Steve brought the shield down to cover his chest, his stomach twisting in sudden anxiety as he blinked away the spots dancing in front of his eyes. Of all the things the future could have come up with, why couldn’t it have just stuck to sci-fi aliens? A figure was left crouched in the middle of a burning circle of intricate lines, and the rain stopped as abruptly as it had started, leaving them soaked and standing in puddles.

“Captain!” Thor boomed, spotting Steve immediately and standing up from where he’d been deposited. He was dressed in leather armor close to what Steve remembered, but his red cape had been replaced by a dramatically draped length of dark cloth, and his hair was a bit longer, his face thinner. He grinned brightly, holding the hammer nonthreateningly at his side. The asphalt around his feet was still sending up faint wisps of steam, the design left behind by the Bifrost glowing in subtle shades of blue and purple. It gave him an ethereal air that Steve tried to memorize, suddenly itching for a pencil.

Steve lifted a hand to wave, but none of the agents had lowered their weapons. Thor gave them a frankly amused look and strode forward, moving through the barrels of the rifles like they were nothing more threatening than pointed sticks. Steve took his cue from the bigger man and moved forward to meet him in the middle, offering his hand. Thor took him by the forearm and squeezed hard, yanking him in to a tight hug. Steve just barely got the shield out of the way in time and endured Thor’s enthusiastic back-pounding. He had to put his free arm around Thor’s shoulders just to stay upright, but the uneasy knot in his chest let go of one more thread with each squeeze of Thor’s arms. He smelled like ozone, leather, and green things. It was unexpectedly comforting.

“I had hoped you would be here to meet me, my friend. How fare things here in Midgard?”

“Good, things are good. We’re glad to you have you back. Are you? Back, I mean?” Steve asked over the wind noise. It was dying down slowly, the last flickers of lightning fading as the clouds broke apart.

“I am indeed returned,” Thor said with a grin that was touched on the corners with a sad shadow. Thor didn’t look like he’d aged a day, but he _felt_ older. “I have my father’s leave to remain on Midgard for the time being, to make reparations for some of the damage my … conflict with my brother has caused.”

“We’re happy to have you,” Steve reassured him, and Thor nodded. “You guys can put those down any time,” he added, turning to look at Coulson.

The agent seemed uncharacteristically distractedly and looked at Steve blankly for half a beat. “Oh, yes.” He flicked one hand. “Are you travelling alone today, Mr. Odinson?” he asked, tone as bored as a TSA agent at the end of his shift. At Thor’s nod, he made a gesture with his fingers. “Pack it in, get the science team out here for some readings. Pleasure to have you back on the planet, Mr. Odinson. I assume you’ll be staying with the Avengers Initiative?”

Thor glanced at Steve. He still hadn’t let go, and the embrace had gone about a minute and a half longer than was strictly politely, but Steve didn’t mind much. As far as display of strengths went, he was happier with Thor’s arms around him than his hammer against the shield. Steve nodded back at him.

“It appears I will be, aye,” Thor said with a smile, jostling Steve in apparent gratitude.

“Very good. Someone from our office will be over to speak with you soon. We have forms we created just for you. Records will be happy to get the first crack at them.” He gave them a tight smile, his eyes sliding past Steve’s shoulder to Clint, and then away. With one more nod, he turned on his heel and walked back to the line of black SUV’s surrounding the site.

Thor finally let Steve go, but only so he could swoop Clint up in both arms, squeezing him tightly and lifting him off the ground while Clint pounded ineffectually at his shoulders. “Put me down, you big – uhg! Ouch!”

“Captain Rogers?”

Steve turned, not aware that he was smiling until he found the grim-faced agent standing behind him. He schooled his expression into something more suitable for ‘Captain Rogers,’ waiting.

“Grant Ward,” the man introduced, holding out his hand. Steve took it. He had a slightly-firmer-than-necessary handshake, and a smile that didn’t match his eyes. Steve noted it, but he didn’t give it too much thought – he’d met a lot of long time military tough guys who got nervous around him. “I’m a member of Agent Coulson’s team.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Agent.”

“Grant, please,” the man said with that nervous, twitchy smile that Steve thought was meant to be shy. He pulled his hand back, subtly straightening his shoulders. “I’ll be tagging along with you back to the tower, sir.”

“The Avengers Initiative is not under SHIELD or DHS, Agent… - Grant.”  Tony had worked hard to make sure SHIELD didn’t have a fist around the Initiative, though Steve wanted to stay on friendly terms with them as much as possible. SHIELD could make it difficult to do their job if the relationship soured too badly, and he was a fan of cooperation and sharing resources. That aside, accepting orders from SHIELD agents sounded like a bad precedent to start.

“I can’t follow you into the building,” Grant agreed, lips thinning in a slight grimace, eyebrows curling. “But I can follow you _to_ the building, and then sit outside.”

Steve gave him an assessing look. “What is it that you need?”

“Just protocol, sir. We need to keep track of Mr. Odinson for the next seventy-two hours. Just to make sure he is who he says he is.”

“Not to poke holes in your plan,” Steve said, brushing the water out of his face, “But if he was really Loki in disguise, he could probably manage more than seventy-two hours of playing the part.”

Grant shrugged. “I don’t write the protocol, sir, I just follow orders.”

“Of course.” Steve could remember _saying_ similar words before and wondered if he’d had the same expression on his face at the time. He’d never actually been very good about going through with the ‘following’ part. “Alright. Well, I see no reason not to invite you in for lunch.”

“Thank you, sir.” His smile was charming bordering on too-charming, but he seemed dedicated enough and there was no harm in fostering a little good will.

Natasha handed Thor her cellphone as soon as they got into the Avenger’s van, Jane’s number already dialing, and they were quiet as Thor caught up with her, his voice soft and loving, the fingers of his right hand ghosting over the leather gauntlet that held a Mark in the shape of a constellation. Steve looked away from him, pressed against the window, and curled his hand in his seatbelt so he wouldn’t be tempted to take the wristband off.

~*~

Bruce was nowhere to be seen by the time they made it back to the tower. Considering the way Thor and the Hulk had liked fighting, Steve wasn’t surprised, and wasn’t keen on dragging him out of his lab. Thor did ask after him, but Natasha and Clint neatly redirected his attention with a tour of their floor. Steve found himself tagging along, though mostly to keep an eye on Grant, who had faded into the background in a way that Steve found unnerving. Grant was attractive, tall, and owned the space he occupied. He hadn’t struck Steve as a man who was used to going unnoticed, but he was a SHIELD specialist, so maybe it shouldn’t have been unexpected.

“This is most impressive,” Thor praised. It was the first time any of them had been into the room set aside for “HMVIAP” (His Majesty the Very Important Alien Prince). It was the same dimensions as Steve’s room, but that was where the similarity ended. Steve’s room was warm colors – wood floors, flat walls in pale greens and rich browns, wooden cabinets stained honey gold and lit with warm lights – Thor’s room was a masterpiece of sandy marble, copper fixtures, mahogany, and red upholstery. The two rooms didn’t seem like they could exist side-by-side.

“It feels like home,” Thor said, running a hand over the soft bed coverings. “Our patron has been most thoughtful in his choices.”

“Tony has been very generous,” Steve agreed, taking a peek at Thor’s bookshelves – a collection of bodice-ripping Harlequin romances. He wasn’t sure if Tony genuinely thought Thor would enjoy them, or he was making a joke out of it, but they looked oddly at home between the Blu-ray collection and the Viking artifacts. When he turned back to the group, he found Natasha examining him, head tipped and eyes intense. She didn’t look away when caught, just hiked an eyebrow at him in a silent question that Steve couldn’t quite decipher.

“Wait till you see the gym,” Clint said excitedly, grabbing Thor by his cape and tugging him toward the door.

Thor smiled indulgently – not the cocky smirk that Steve might have expected – and let Clint haul him out of the room. Grant ghosted after them, his eyes drifting around the room with casual interest as he followed them into the hallway. 

“Mind helping me put together some lunch, Agent?” Steve said, moving subtly to block his path.

Grant looked down the hallway at Clint and Thor’s retreating forms, but he gave Steve an affable smile and nodded. “Of course, Captain.”

~*~

Jarvis set Grant up in a guest suit three floors down after lunch. He looked like he would have rather slept on the floor outside Thor’s door, but he went after Jarvis politely promised to inform him if Thor left the tower.

“It was a pleasure to meet you all,” he said, giving Natasha a particular smile that she returned with something scarily close to a jackal’s grin. Grant was visibly off-footed by the reaction, but he recovered, offered Steve, Clint, and Thor handshakes, and reluctantly got back into the elevator.

“I’m sure this goes without saying,” Steve said once the elevator doors had slid closed, “But let’s not have the agent wandering around the floor on his own.”

“Don’t trust the SHIELD man?” Natasha asked, taking a delicate sip of her tea and fluttering her eyelashes.

“Not like you have a pair of them living next door to you or anything,” Clint added, leaning sideways to bump his shoulder against Steve’s.

“You two aren’t SHIELD, you’re Avengers. I’m sure he’s fine. But I’m also sure that Fury wouldn’t cry too hard if his agent managed to slip a bug under the kitchen table.”

“I monitor all floors of the tower for any unauthorized recording devices, Captain. I can assure you that the kitchen table is free from ‘bugs’ – listening devices or otherwise,” Jarvis said, sounding a touch stiff.

Steve groaned. “I’m not going to win this one,” he decided, finishing off his milk and standing to gather his dishes. Grant had been an able sous chef, and they’d managed to put together a decent lunch of pasta salad, asparagus, and lemon pepper chicken. He’d even helped to clean up, and he’d turned out to be an interesting conversationalist once he relaxed. Steve couldn’t quite put a finger on why the agent put him on guard.

“It’s just because he’s pretty and charming,” Natasha said as if reading his mind. She stepped up next to him at the sink, setting a stack of dishes down under his hands and taking the plate he’d just washed to rinse it off. “Pretty and charming are alarming when you know the person is trained to be that way,” she continued.

Steve thought that over, handing her a glass and then picking up another plate. “You don’t alarm me.”

“Are you trying to say I’m pretty?” she teased.

Steve snorted, and thought unbidden, _Peggy would have loved you_. The thought sobered him up, but it didn’t make him feel broken the way it would have six months before. Peggy and Natasha together would have been a terror, and he would have loved to have seen it. He made a mental note to mention the observation to Peggy the next time he visited, and applied himself to the washing.

“Is the Man of Iron not joining us?” Thor asked over the clatter of the dishes.

“He’s too cool for us,” Clint said offhandedly. “Rubbing elbows with Tony Stark at some kind of to-do in California.”

“To-do.” Thor repeated uncertainly. He glanced over at Steve for clarification.

“A party for wealthy people. And that’s what Tony _pays_ him for,” he added with a significant look at Clint, who just widened his eyes to show how impressed he was with the whole concept.

Natasha made a humming noise beside him. She took the last plate out of his hands and ran it under the water. “So it’s ‘Tony’ now?” she murmured softly.

Steve ignored her, dried his hands off, and abandoned the sink. “Feeling up to some exercise, Thor, or would you like to get some rest?”

Thor stood with a ready grin, scooping up his hammer. “I have been looking forward to sparring with you, Captain. I believe the ‘gym’ will be a sufficient warm-up arena.”

Steve followed him into the hallway, aware of Natasha’s eyes on the back of his neck until he turned the first corner.

~*~

Thor was shirtless and taking great big steps around the gym, swinging his arms out in broad circles by the time Steve made it in after him. He tossed Steve a grin over his shoulder, lengthening his stride to its limit and touching his knee to the floor in a perfect lunge.

“Show off,” Steve said, but he set the shield down to rest against his leg so he could pull his shirt off. Just to even the score. Thor’s grin stretched even broader, and he detoured from his path around the jogging track to the sparring mat.

“Stay in the ring,” Steve said, “No breaking any of the equipment, and no throwing anything through the windows. We don’t need to drive Tony’s insurance up any higher than it already is.”

Thor’s brows first drew together, and then one climbed up his forehead. “Insurance?” he asked, looking up to the ceiling.

“It’s… a stupid, complicated, expensive thing. Maybe we should do this hand-to-hand,” Steve decided for safety’s sake. Thor shrugged amiably and set the hammer down on one of the poles surrounding the ring. Steve set the shield on the mat and nudged it under the ropes.

They circled around each other, warming up muscles and getting the other’s measure. After the Invasion, Thor had only been on the planet for another evening while he secured the tesseract and his brother. He’d had Loki on a literal leash the entire time, but they’d managed one brief sparring session in the dead of night when Steve stumbled on the brothers in SHIELD’s specially designed vintage make-Captian-America-feel-at-home-in-his-museum-display gym. Loki had been sitting, sullen, on the faded leather couch, the leash attached to his cuffs held by the simple expediency of Mjolnir set on top of the links. Steve had made it three steps into the gym, caught sight of Loki, and turned to go back out, but Thor had called him back and they’d wrestled in the old boxing ring, successfully destroying most of the gym in the process. Steve had only felt a little bit guilty.

“You have gained some confidence in my absence,” Thor observed as he watched Steve move around the perimeter of the ring. “It is good. You seemed very lost before.”

“Everyone adapts eventually.”

“Not everyone chooses to,” Thor corrected. He made a sudden lunge across the ring. Steve had thought he was ready for him, but Thor caught him with an open-handed hook around the ribs and flung him across the ring. He hit the ropes and bounced off, surprised, the skin over his ribs stinging from the contact. A grin stretched across his mouth and he brought both fists up, moving to meet Thor in the middle of the mat.

They met in a brief flurry of blows, and although it was harder than he’d been hit since the last time he and Thor had fought, it felt almost lazy to him, playful. Thor took him down to the mat inside two minutes and Steve had an uphill fight on his hands from that point forward, but he didn’t mind. It almost felt like home.

~*~

Shoulder to shoulder with a thunder god, Steve groaned and put a hand to his ribs. They were both laid out on the floor, soaked with sweat and turning interesting shades of purple.

“Have you had enough?” Thor asked breathlessly, sounding almost plaintive.

Steve thought about it. He grabbed his pantleg in one fist and pulled to get himself upright. “I can do another round,” he said.

Making a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a growl, Thor reached up, snagged him by his shoulder, and yanked him back to the mat. Before Steve could get his balance back, the bigger man just rolled over and dropped his weight to Steve’s chest.

“I will remain until you’ve called enough,” Thor said. He was pinning both of Steve’s arms with his bulk, and didn’t seem phased by the knee Steve brought up into his ribs. He grunted, but just resettled his weight and pillowed his chin on his wrists. “I will not tire of this,” he warned.

“You’re never going to hear me say uncle,” Steve gasped out, but he was having trouble breathing around Thor’s weight. His vision was already going spotty, and he thought it was likely that he would pass out if he didn’t shift Thor’s weight one way or another. He tried tossing himself from one side to the other, and finally managed to get one arm free. Thor snagged him by his wrist and shoved his hand back down.

“Say you yield.”

“Not. Gonna. Happen.”

Thor grunted and shifted his weight further forward so they were almost nose to nose. He slung his leg over one of Steve’s thighs, and Steve just managed to get the other up around his waist before that was pinned too.

“This course of action will not free you,” Thor said, but Steve had given himself just enough leverage. He let all the air out of his lungs at once to create a little space and then shoved hard. The angle was awkward, and Thor weighed as much as a small car, but the man toppled over. He took Steve with him, and they ended up in another tangle on their sides. At least it was easier to breathe.

After a minute of unsuccessful wiggling on both of their parts, Thor made an irritated sound and asked, “Truce?”

“Truce,” Steve agreed readily. They both let go and dropped back to the mat, sucking in air.

“You know,” Natasha said, startling them both, “People would pay for this kind of action.”

Steve jerked his head around to make sure she didn’t have her phone out. She was perched improbably on top of Mjolnir, looking like an oversized bird of prey with her hair down around her shoulders. She was sweat-dampened, and Steve realized that she must have completed a whole workout without either him or Thor noticing.

“Our team has made a good choice in its leader,” Thor said, lifting a leg in the air and wincing as he stretched it out. Steve had gotten him pretty good behind the knee and he felt a pang of guilt as he watched Thor massage at it. “The good captain is a skilled fighter, but all is overshadowed by his stubbornness.”

Natasha’s only response was a smirk. “We’ve booked a flight for Jane on a military transport. Darcy’s coming along, and they’ll both be here tomorrow morning.”

“Excellent!” Thor declared. He bounded to his feet as if all his pains had faded away and held a hand out for Natasha. She hiked an eyebrow at him, and in one neat move had planted her foot in his palm, and then danced across to his shoulder and flipped off to land neatly straddling Steve’s hips.

Steve had both hands out and his knees dragged in by the time she landed. She gave him an amused look, accepted Thor’s easy appreciation, and sauntered out of the ring in the direction of the showers.

“I’m not doing any acrobatics for you,” Steve warned when Thor held his hand out a second time. His grip was warm and slightly clammy, but Steve appreciated the assistance off the mat. Thor somehow still smelled like ozone, and Steve wondered in passing if that was just his body odor.

“Is it considered impolite on Midgard to inquire after another’s soulmate?” Thor asked before Steve could bend his strange observation into a question.

The question drained the curiosity out of him, and he pulled his hand out of Thor’s grip, automatically turning his wrist over to look at his Mark.

“My apologies,” Thor said when Steve didn’t immediately respond.

“No. It’s not – it’s fine. I have met him,” Steve said. His heart beat a hard tattoo against his ribs. It was the first time he’d said it out loud. “Things didn’t work out, but he’s. Great. He’s really wonderful.”

Thor frowned. He reached forward and set a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Knowing the fulfillment a soul bond brings, I find it hard to believe that things will not work out.” He squeezed. “Have faith, my friend.”

Steve mustered up a smile for his sparring partner. “Sure,” he said, but he remembered how white Tony’s face had been, how quickly he’d agreed not to form their bond, how relieved he’d looked when he’d gotten back into the elevator. He wasn’t so sure Thor was right, but standing next to the man who’d fallen out of the sky at his soulmate’s feet made arguing difficult.


	6. Practice Safe Software

Tony shifted in the suit as the elevator _ping_ ’ed its way up to the Avengers’ floor. He’d successfully avoided socializing with any of his teammates for more than a month, but it was Clint’s birthday and Natasha had cornered him to make sure he’d be there. He knew how to make the token appearance, it would be fine. Make a couple turns around the room, avoid the alcohol, give the birthday boy his present, and beg off for being tired.

The doors opened with a soft chime and the elevator flooded with loud music filled with thumping bass, louder than even most of _Tony’s_ parties. The common room was packed with people Tony didn’t know, but he spotted Thor’s giant biceps, and Steve’s blond head in the crush of people. It was a strange sensation for Tony to step into a party of all music and barely any noise of chatter. All around the room, clumps of party-goers conversed with their hands, and Clint was in the middle of it, smiling like Tony had never seen before.

Although the guests had obviously had time to get used to the rest of the Avengers, Iron Man still caused a little bit of a stir. He nodded to the guests, shook a few hands, and did his clumsy best to return greetings with one hand full and the other not articulate enough for sign language. He made it through the throngs of people, and somehow felt more exposed in the armor than he would have in nothing but a pair of socks.

 _Have you started molting yet, birdbrain?_ Tony flashed at Clint, handing over the box.

Clint set it down on the end table and signed, _Wanna take the suit off and find out?_

 _You wish,_ Tony flashed back. He pointed at the box. _Open it, already._

Clint pulled the top off the box and peered inside. The smile melted off his face and turned to an uncertain frown. He pulled the cloth out of the box and looked at Tony curiously, folding it out. The cloth shimmered like smoke as it fell out between his hands, light and soft as silk – a high collared, long sleeved shirt with reinforced bands at the wrists.

Draping it over his arm, Clint signed, _Thanks?_ His shoulders twitching upward, one eyebrow curling.

Tony hesitated, but flexed his fingers so the gauntlets peeled back from his hands. Clint’s eyes went wide, but Tony was wearing black gloves under the suit. Clint’s expression fell in slight disappointment, but Tony brought his hands up.

_It’s to wear under your vest, stupid flightless bird._

Clint frowned at him, looked at the shirt, and then laughed. He signed back _you mean V.E.S.T._ And then dragged his thumbs down his chest and across his waist.

 _That’s what I said._ Tony repeated the gesture – he hadn’t regularly practiced ASL since his second year at MIT, and Jarvis’ flashing lights had made him lazy.

 _No._ Clint started again, but waved him off. _Thank you. It’s nice._

 _Don’t put it in your closet and forget it. It’s… special fabric,_ Tony tried to explain without the vocabulary to tell him that it would slow down most projectiles and even turn a knife at the right angle. _Wear it_.

 _I will!_ Clint promised. He shoved at Tony’s chest with a broad grin, and then repeated, _Thank you._

Tony waved him. _Sure._ He flipped his hands forward to curl the gauntlets back around his fingers. Clint unfolded the shirt again and rubbed his fingers over the fabric, looking at it closely. Tony had always hated Clint running into battle half naked. He wished he could have given it to him as _Tony_ , but he wasn’t sure Clint would have taken it if he’d tried. Tony moved away while Clint was occupied with the shirt, his friends crowding around him to examine it, none of them aware that they were holding three hundred thousand dollars of R&D that would become the next Big Thing in body armor.

He made a slow circuit of the room, waved away offers of food and drink, and ended up with his gauntlets pulled back for most of the hour so he could do his best to make polite conversation. The novelty of him wore off quickly, and he was able to fade into a corner of the room to just watch after a few circuits. He had the audio input turned down so he wasn’t being overwhelmed by the music, but he could feel it through the suit. It was almost comforting.

Natasha slid into the space next to him. She offered him a tall glass with a straw in it, and Tony tried to ignore it, but she didn’t budge. He really hated being handed things, but he took it carefully by the base and opened the face slit. It was a strawberry banana smoothie with mint and some kind of chocolate. Kind of weird, but not bad.

“You look like you’re enjoying yourself,” Natasha said with a hint of sarcasm coloring the words. Her voice came through his internal line, and he realized that she must have had her comm unit in.

“It’s nice to see the birdbrain having fun,” Tony admitted, avoiding the question she was actually answering. Clint played the part of team clown, but Tony recognized the darkness in his eyes, the way he sat when it was quiet and he didn’t think he had any acting to do. He understood it, and it made Tony both jealous and warm to see him smile.

Natasha nodded. “You’ve been avoiding us,” she said after a moment of silence.

Tony said, “I’ve been busy.” Which was the truth, and still a lie.

“Mmm,” was Natasha’s response. She shifted to lean back against the wall. “When you wear more than one face, you start to forget which one is real. Keeping it straight is enough to keep anyone busy.”

Tony released the straw and set the cup down very carefully so he didn’t just throw it. The face slit slammed shut and he walked away from her without a word. She didn’t follow him, but he felt her eyes on his back as he slid through the gathered partiers to the glass door. The air in the suit was getting too warm, difficult to breathe. He fumbled to get the door open, and he knew the gauntlets were up to the task of the handle, but he kept slipping on it.

“Jarvis, door,” he hissed finally, and it slid open. He couldn’t open the faceplate, but he popped the mouth slit and opened the vents. Frigid air gusted in and he sucked in half a dozen breaths, resting his hands on the railing. He could still feel the music as a low thrum in his chest, a tingle on the back of his neck and up his scalp. He straightened up and released the railing so he could stretch his fingers and stand upright. The city spilled out underneath and around him in a sea of glittering gems, and he felt lost among all the lights.

“You’re not sneaking off, are you?”

Tony winced. He’d managed to direct all of his circling to avoid Steve throughout the night, but there was nothing he could do to escape him now except fire up his thrusters and take off. He considered it for as long as it took him to turn around and see Steve standing in the doorway, looking uncertain and hopeful. The balcony lights hit his eyes just right to highlight his lashes, casting long shadows down his cheeks.

“Just stepping away from the noise,” Tony said finally.

Steve took it as an invitation and stepped onto the balcony, closing the door behind him. The tower was impeccably sound proofed and it closed off the noise almost entirely, leaving just the low _froomfroomfroom_ of the bass to make the glass shiver. Steve moved over to the rail to stand next to him, so close that Tony’s proximity sensors lit up red on his right side. It was all he could do not to lean over those last few inches, even knowing that he would never feel the touch.

“We’ve missed you around here,” Steve said after a long moment.

Tony couldn’t even make himself say _busy_ , or _my boss is a taskmaster_. His vision was suddenly cloudy, and his throat felt thick.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I know you’re busy. And I know we pry a lot.” He leaned forward to put his forearms on the rail, looking out over the cityscape. His thumb rubbed a slow circle over the dark blue wristband hiding his Mark. “It’s just that you’re my friend. And I wish I could see more of you… but I realized that I must have been pushing you away. So, I promise I’ll do my best to be better from now on.” He turned his head to smile at Tony like it could be that easy. Tony put a hand to the faceplate. For a terrible second, he wanted to rip it off – show Steve exactly who he thought was his _friend_.

His fingers curled. He _might_ have pulled it off if the assemble alarm hadn’t blared in his ear.

~*~

Tony flew alongside the quinjet. He was patched into the briefing taking place inside the cab, and groaned aloud.

“This crap again?” he muttered to himself while the SHIELD presentation ran in the corner of his vision. A civilian cruise liner had been attacked in international waters and the passengers were being held captive by terrorists. Since there was a SHIELD scientist on board, Fury had asked them to intercede.

“Do we have any idea what their demands are _?_ ” Steve asked. His voice hardly resembled the Steve who had stood beside Tony on the balcony, apologizing for something that _was_ his fault, but apologizing for all the wrong reasons. He wasn’t really Steve at all, he was _Captain America_ , and Tony was both mystified and envious by the way he was able to separate the two so clearly. He didn’t even _have_ a secret identity, and yet he had a more convincing break between Steve and Captain America than Tony did from Iron Man.

 _“_ Other than announcing that they’d captured the ship, there’s been no communication yet,” Natasha answered after a brief pause.

“Who announces that they’ve taken something hostage without having ransom demands?” Clint asked, obviously annoyed. Tony would have been annoyed too if he’d been called away from his own party when he was actually enjoying himself. It was never the obligatory, mind-numbing social engagements that were interrupted by bad guys with more tech on their hands than good sense.

“Alright…” Steve huffed out. “SHIELD has a negotiator trying to get in touch with them?”

“Yeah. If we can get aboard and retrieve Dr. Sung, we should. Otherwise, we’re on standby in case something exciting happens.”

“Should I take a quick jaunt ahead and see what I can see?” Tony asked, looping a lazy circle over the quinjet.

“We don’t want to spook them,” Steve cautioned.

“I can stay out of sight easier than a quinjet.” He already had a course plotted out that would take him above the cloud cover, and was moving an SI imaging satellite to get a picture of the ship. The nearest satellite would be in range in less than seven minutes, but he doubted there would be much to see on deck. His own infrared camera would be better for the task.

“First sign that someone’s spotted you, you get out of there. Got it?”

“Loud and clear, mon capitan!” Tony put on a burst of speed and fell away from the shelter of the quinjet. He set himself on the flightpath and let Jarvis takeover while he monitored the satellite’s progress. He needed to update the satellites with a more robust propulsion system. This business of waiting for one to come into range when he needed it was not going to happen again. He relaxed against the cradle of the suit’s padded interior and tried to get himself into the hostage-negotiation mindset and away from thoughts of Steve.

~*~

“I’m counting about 2,250 warm bodies,” Tony reported, hovering above the sparse cloud cover. It was the middle of the night and all of his external lights were dark, so he probably would have been safe below the clouds, but he didn’t want to be the asshole that fucked up hostage negotiations. “Most of them are clumped together in the approximate middle of the vessel, but there are four smaller groups – three aft and one fore. Five on deck, looks like they’re patrolling.”

“The five on deck should be easy to manage if we have to in,” Steve mused. “Records show 1,460 passengers, and 725 crew members on board. That gives us 2,210 hostages and 40 bad guys. Any luck with the SHIELD negotiator, Nat?”

“You’re not going to like it,” Natasha replied, her voice cold and flat the way it only went when she was angry. “They’ve got one ransom demand. Tony Stark.”

Tony was lucky he had Jarvis in control of his flight, or he might have dropped out of the sky. “Come again?” he asked into the ensuing silence.

“They want Tony Stark delivered to them aboard the ship, and they’ll let the passengers go.”

“Fuck that shit,” Clint surprised him by snarling.

“This is an unacceptable demand,” Thor added in a sonorous growl. Tony could clearly imagine him with his giant arms crossed over his giant chest, and he felt unexpectedly warmed by the image.

“If terrorists had acceptable demands they wouldn’t be resorting to terrorism,” Bruce pointed out, then added, “But they must be on something spectacular to think we’re going to hand them Tony Stark. Or anyone, for that matter.”

“Nothing to add, Iron Man?” Steve asked quietly when they’d run through the brief bout of incredulous remarks.

Tony had noticed that _Steve_ hadn’t had anything to add, but he just said, “My opinion on that should be self-evident.”

“Any idea why these guys what your boss, then?” he asked.

Tony laughed sharply. “There are only a few reasons that anyone kidnaps Tony Stark, and I’m going to guess that they’re not after the money this time.”

“Might as well just ask for a nuclear warhead while they’re at it,” Clint muttered in seeming agreement. “So what are we doing here?” He asked before Tony could process that the statement had driven out whatever warm-fuzzies he had about the affair.

“The hostage negotiator is still trying to establish a proper dialogue, and the analysts are working overtime to get a read on who these people are. So far all they’ve found is something called AIM – all caps, probably an acronym. Sound familiar to anyone?”

A round of negatives sounded on the comms. It did sound familiar to Tony, but he wasn’t sure why, or how, or if it would turn out to be one of those things that was reasonable for Tony Stark to know, but not for his body guard. He decided to keep his mouth shut until he had a better idea of what it was.

Clicking off the main line, he said, “Jarvis, do what you do best, buddy. Get me the 4-1-1.”

“ _Already on it, Sir. There is a call incoming from SHIELD for Mr. Stark. Shall I patch it through?”_

Tony cussed. “Send them to Pepper first. Mr. Stark is busy.”

“ _They’ve already been through Miss Potts, Sir.”_

He cussed again. “Okay, patch it in.” He heard the click of the audio line connecting in, and Maria Hill’s photograph came up on the HUD along with a vocal analyzer that was picking up a whispered conversation in the background. “Why, Agent Hill,” Tony gushed while he kept one eye on the infrared display, timers clicking away above the five patrolmen to track each route and how long the windows were in between them. “What an entirely _unexpected_ pleasure.”

“Iron Man filled you in already,” she said, but it wasn’t a question.

“More or less. Guess I’m popular tonight. Any idea what these guys want me for?”

“Funny,” Maria drawled, “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”

“Sorry, fresh out of omnipotence today. I’ve got people scanning through my hate mail to see if anything stands out as particularly Major-Terrorist-Operation, but nothing coming up so far.” He didn’t know that someone was actually scanning through the mail, but Pepper had certainly already been told about the _Give us Tony Stark_ demand, and she would have someone on the hate mail, and that someone would have said something if they’d found the letter signed, _Sincerely Yours, Local Terrorist Organization Near You._

Maria made a humming noise of acknowledgement. “We’re going to keep you out of this for as long as we can,” she said as if that wasn’t ominous. “Stay available.”

She cut the connection just as Steve said, “Iron Man, you still up there?”

“Just enjoying a little high altitude moon bathing, Cap. What can I do for you?”

“There’s a SHIELD ops team approaching the vessel from the south. Can you guide them in?”

“Iron Man tour services at your disposal,” Tony confirmed as he spotted the tiny spec of heat signatures to the south of the moving cruise liner. The line clicked again, and Tony said, “Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, I will be your Terrorist-Run cruise ship director the evening. Any requests for music? Special sights you’d like me to point out?”

“How about radio silence, flyboy?” a gruff voice suggested.

“I’ve secured your line, and if anyone can hear my voice outside of your comms then you have more problems than someone with a fetish for seafaring vessels. Slow your approach, swing around twenty seven degrees north-by-north east, come alongside. There’s a ladder amidships and no one currently on the port-side of the vessel. Wait for my mark, and I’ll get you on deck.”

“Acknowledged, Iron Man,” Gruff Man said.

~*~

“So now they have 2,2 _18_ hostages?” Clint clarified.

Patched into the op’s team’s cameras, Tony said, “2,217. There’s still one of them running around in the engine room.” It was like watching a playback of a really frustrating first person shooter. The ops team had managed to get below decks, but they’d been overtaken alarmingly quickly. Only Gruff Man was still on the loose, and it looked like he was hiding on top of a turbine, where he was Extremely Useful.

“ _Call from Miss Hill, Sir.”_

“Little busy, J.”

_“She is being very insistent.”_

Tony made a frustrated noise, told Gruff Man to stay put, and drew in a calming breath. “Bring her on.” As soon as he heard the line click in, he said, “Not that I’m not flattered, but I feel like there are better things you could be doing with your time than flirting with me.”

“We need you to talk to them, Stark.”

“Sounds like a phenomenal idea,” Tony quipped. He adjusted his attitude to take some pressure off his chest and hips, his body shifting slightly back and down as he righted himself in the air.

“We need to find out what they want you for.”

“You mean you me need to stall for time because your Super Spy Assassins have upped the hostage count?”

“Got it in one,” she acknowledged. “Just keep them talking for as long as you can, and try not to piss them off.”

“No promises,” Tony said, but she’d already disconnected the line. “I’m going to be off comms for a few minutes, Cap,” he said, “I’m sorting through some data, I’ll get back to you.”

“Stay on audio,” Steve said, “In case we need to make a tactical entry.”

“You got it.” Tony pushed the main Avengers’ channel to the side and asked, “What have you got on AIM, Jarvis?”

“ _Regrettably nothing, yet, Sir. I am accessing the deep web now.”_

“Practice safe software, Jarvis.”

“ _What fantastic advice, Sir,_ ” Jarvis snarked in his undercover-snark voice.

Tony would have needled him further, but Maria’s line popped back up on the HUD, and Tony took a moment to be _Tony_ again before accessing it. “Patching you through to a Mr. White,” she said. “Ready?”

“I negotiate with terrorists every day,” Tony said, “Of course I’m ready.”

“I’ll be on the other line with you,” she responded, as if that was comforting in the slightest. Tony set up a killswitch on her line while he was waiting for the baddies to come through. He really wished he had more to go on than an acronym and that they ‘wanted’ him – he was reasonably sure it wasn’t for his body, certainly wasn’t so they could ransom him back for his money, so his best guess was that they wanted him to build something or fix something. Which was a non-starter from the getgo.

The new line clicked on, a new box cluttering up his HUD with a place filler picture of the Laughing Man. The vocal analyzer was picking up nothing but heavy breathing. Tony bit back on the sarcastic quip hanging out on the tip of his tongue and said, “Tony Stark speaking.”

“Mr. Stark,” an oily voice greeted. The vocal analyzer only picked it up as peaks and valleys, but Tony could practically _feel_ the oil dripping out of his ears and sliding down the sides of his neck. He shuddered. “How good of you to take time out of your busy schedule for a chat.”

“You know,” Tony said, “You could have just called my office and set up an appointment. Consulting hours are every third Thursday from one to four.”

“I’ve tried the direct approach before, Mr. Stark,” Oily said. “You haven’t left me with a lot of options to get your attention.”

“Well, you have my attention now.” Tony swiped a hand through the air, pushing several screens out of the way and drawing the information on Dr. Sung up closer. Molecular biologist. Tony couldn’t be sure, but his instinct was that Dr. Sung didn’t play into it at all – if they’d wanted Sung, they would have had no reason to call for Tony. Biology of any sort wasn’t his strong suit. Unless they were talking something biomechanical. Potentially lots of yikes. “What can I do for you?”

“You can be on this cruiseship in forty-five minutes,” Oily said, “Or I will execute twenty-five of my captives, starting with the children.”

“Right to the big guns?” Tony guessed, but he had to swallow hard to stave off the wave of nausea that threatened to make his suit a very uncomfortable place to be. Who the fuck was this guy?

“Forty-five minutes, Mr. Stark.”

“Just tell me what you want,” Tony hurried to say before Oily could disconnect the line. “You obviously want me to build something, fix something, that kind of thing. So tell me what you want and maybe we can come to a better compromise than killing children.” Data was flashing across his HUD faster than he could process it, using every second to analyze the acoustics in an attempt to pinpoint Oily the Leader, gain some kind of insight into anything – where he was from, his age, his native language, _anything_.

“I will be happy to share all the details with you,” Oily told him with extra oil poured on top, “In forty-three minutes and… twenty-one seconds.”

The line went dead. Tony stared uncomprehendingly at the red slash crossed through the Laughing Man icon. He felt sick to his stomach, his skin crawling and twisting inside the suit. He thrashed helplessly in the tight confines of his armor, trying to make space for himself, tempted to open the faceplate, or the entire suit. He tamped down on the first impulse to just drop from the sky and burrow a hole through the main deck so he could start with the _laying waste_ portion of the night’s program.

“Mr. Stark?” Maria asked, her voice gentler than anything Tony had heard from her to date.

“Tactical solution sounds wise,” Tony interrupted before she could say anything further. “Tactical solution in the next forty-one minutes.” The timer took up a corner of his HUD, counting down in ugly red digits. “Get it done, Hill.”

He disconnected the line before she could respond. If he hadn’t already been hovering over the ship, he would have been on his way to the nearest, fastest jet. He knew SHIELD wouldn’t let him fall into terrorist hands again, not with what he could do, what he _knew_. They’d put a bullet in his head before they let AIM walk away with him. So he had 39:52 to figure out how to get those hostages off the ship.

Barring that, he had 39:48 to figure out how to get himself into AIM’s hands without taking a bullet with him.


	7. Floaties and water landings

“Pepper, Peppy, Pep. Please tell me you have something on AIM,” Tony said by way of greeting as soon as Pepper’s face came up on the HUD.

“Tony, are you okay?”

Tony made a noise that fell somewhere between _Sure, of course I’m okay, I just had a conversation with a fucking madman who wants me in exchange for more than 2,000 people, and even I’m not worth 2,000 people_ and _Pepper, I love you, but I am really freaking busy right now._ He had schematics of the cruise ship taking up most of the HUD, and Jarvis – thank God for Jarvis – had finally dug up some information on AIM, though it wasn’t much. Advanced Idea Mechanics (seriously? This is what happened when the acronym was created before the name, take note SHIELD), a teensy little startup Think Tank in the 80’s that went belly up in the early 2000’s along with the stock crash that wiped out a lot of organizations like AIM. Or, at least, it had _appeared_ to go belly up. And then they dumped a truckload of money into making themselves so inconspicuous that they barely blipped even the most sensitive radar. After which they apparently changed mission statements from _Affect positive change_ to _Blow shit up and be all around really terrible people who are huge thorns in the sides of other people who are (ostensibly) less terrible_. Go them.

“TONY!”

“Busy, Pep. If you don’t have useful –”

“- Give me the thing, Pepper,” Happy interrupted. He appeared briefly in the screen and Pepper fended him off, moving the curving stand mic out of the way. “Pepper, just – move, please, please move, give me –“

“Happy, what are you – ?”

“Pepper, I need you to –”

“-Not the _time_ , Happy – ”

“ _MOVE,_ Pepper!” He appeared in the view screen again and bodily moved her out of the way, apologizing the whole while. Tony wished that he wasn’t working against a very bad tempered clock, because the exchange was absolutely fascinating. “Tony, hi, are you? Is this thing on, can he hear me? Tony! Can you hear me? HELLO?”

“Right here, Hap,” Tony said, yanking his attention away from the mountains and mountains of data, and still not sure how Happy had managed to more-or-less _live_ in his shadow for more than two decades without figuring out the mysteries of technology.

“I heard you say AIM? That’s what you said, like all caps?”

“Yes, all caps. Advanced –”

“Idea Mechanics,” Happy finished hurriedly. “That was the – there was that, that _guy_ at the New Year’s thing. 1999, New Year’s thing with Maya Hansen, and then the exploding plant I saved you from –”

“Did you just say Maya Hansen?” Tony interrupted sharply, already running the searches. He hadn’t seen Maya since. Probably since January 1st, 2000, come to think of it. What had she been up to?

“Yes! And there was that _guy_ in the elevator, with the buck teeth and the scarecrow hair and the glasses?”

“Not ringing a bell,” Tony said distractedly, trying to track down Maya’s timeline. She just disappeared off the face of the academic planet in 2004 – hadn’t published a single paper, or signed her name on a convention check-in sheet since.

“That’s because he didn’t have a pair of DDs,” Happy replied, but he was right, so Tony kept his attention on the search. “What was his _name_?!” Happy demanded loudly, making a frustrated noise. “I can picture his face like it was yesterday. He had a business card and a stupid t-shirt, and…” He snapped his fingers nine or ten times, making progressively louder _oh, oh, oh_ noises. “Killian! Killian, Al- something Killian! That’s it.”

“Knew there was a reason I let you steal my girlfriend,” Tony replied, “You’re the best, Hap, thanks.”

If Happy – or Pepper for that matter – had a reply, Tony didn’t catch it before he disconnected the line. “Jarvis, you heard that?”

“I am already running a search for Killian, Al, Alfred, Alfonse, Alex, Alexander –”

“Keep up the good work,” Tony interrupted. The timer in the corner of the HUD clicked down to 19:00 and Tony shuddered inside the suit. He sent the information to the quinjet’s briefing screen, and – because he could actually play nice – to SHIELD.

“You guys getting this?” Tony asked, breaking into the Avenger’s line and interrupting Cap’s tactical entry strategy. There was a brief pause while eyes, presumably, turned to the briefing monitor.

“Aldrich Killian?” Bruce suggested, and Jarvis had data up on him two seconds later. “He published a few papers theorizing on a way to regrow damaged nerve connections in the… late 90’s? Didn’t go anywhere useful, but he had some really off the wall ideas. And Maya Hansen is a virologist, isn’t she? Haven’t heard anything from her in a while.”

Tony stared at the picture of Aldrich Killian – too thin, buck toothed, unkempt, nose too small and mouth too big. He remembered the man, excitedly climbing into the elevator, handing out business cards. Tony had ignored him because if he took the time to listen to every excited scientist with an idea, he would have never achieved anything. And because he’d been on his way up to the hotel room of a very lovely lady with an equally lovely brain, and Killian was the type who would have blithely followed them into the room and been impossible to get rid of. Tony had been cruel in that causal, unthinking way that he’d so often been cruel in the past. That it was coming back to haunt him shouldn’t surprise him anymore.

“Iron Man?”

Tony yanked himself out of the New Year’s 1999 party and dragged his attention back to the comms. “Yeah, Cap?”

“Where’s Mr. Stark? SHIELD is trying to move him to a secure location and they’re being blocked.”

“He’s fine,” Tony said stiffly. _Secure location, my left ass cheek_ , he added silently. “And SHIELD isn’t touching him, so you can tell them to stop trying.”

“Iron Man, I know that Mr. Stark is your –”

“Just trust me, Steve.” It was a struggle not to shout it, not to snarl _he’s your mate_ , and just leave it alone. Steve may not think much of _Mr. Stark_ , but Iron Man was trustworthy. Steve dropped it without another word and Tony hoped that was the end of it. He couldn’t exactly present himself to SHIELD and still be onboard for the tactical entry.

“SHIELD is trying to stall for time,” Steve said, “But we need to be ready to move at a moment’s notice. Ideally, I would like to be able to get into the hostage area before we engage any of the hostiles, which means going through the windows.”

Tony brought up Steve’s briefing, taking in the highlighted windows. He didn’t like it – the hostages were all right up against the windows. Getting in without hurting someone was going to be difficult enough, not even mentioning that the bad guys were going to be shooting at them, with all the hostages right in the line of fire.  He could hear the tight reluctance in Steve’s voice, but he didn’t see another way, so he kept him mouth shut.

“You still there, Tin Head?” Gruff Man asked quietly, his line automatically overriding the Avenger’s main band.

“Enjoy your nap?” Tony asked by way of reply.

“My team is ready to take out the hostiles in the dining area,” Gruff Man said. He sounded a little breathless. “A bunch of them are about to leave to take care of a little problem in the engine room. If you can get a few inflatable slides to those windows, we can get the hostages out while the rest of them are running around the ship.”

Tony was impressed. Not sure how his team that had been taken hostage was communicating this plan, but impressed. “Patching you through to the main line,” he said while the timer ticked down to 14:32, and Maria Hill’s picture came up on the HUD with the big bold “S” that meant it was for Tony and not for Iron Man. He cussed softly. “Gotta take this call, just let me know when I need to be in the air,” he said as he connected Gruff Man to the quinjet, because his new job was apparently switchboard.

“Have you figured out that tactical solution?”

“We’re working on it,” Hill answered shortly. “We need you to come in, Mr. Stark. It’s for your own protection.”

“Yeaah, no. Call back when you have actual useful things to say.” He hung up on her. “Jarvis, if she calls back, make sure she has something more productive to talk about before putting it through to me.”

“Yes, sir,” Jarvis answered. “Sir, I have found a rather odd coincidence in my research. The heat signature and blast patterns that you mapped while on the Roxxon oil freighter appears to match several unsolved bombing cases in the last nine months.”

“Not really the time to be worrying about Roxxon, J,” Tony pointed out. He got the goahead to pick up several inflatable slides SHIELD had on hand at their command post south of the cruise ship. He put on a burst of speed that made him a little nauseous while the timer ticked merrily down to 11:02.

“I cross referenced the data after Mr. Hogan’s mention of the exploding plant in connection to Maya Hansen’s work. I believe the explosions were not bombs, sir, but living creatures,” Jarvis explained. Tony was getting a really nasty feeling in the pit of his gut that had little to do with the Gs he was pulling. “Based on the size of the explosions, I would hazard that they were large primates, or, more likely, people.”

“Goddamnit, Maya, what have you done?” Tony hissed, putting on the breaks a little too close to the deck of the SHIELD carrier, and scooping up the hastily rigged harness with four evacuation slides packaged up in a net. He got the harness over his head on the fly, adjusting his angle so his thrusters wouldn’t damage the cargo as he took off again.

“ETA on those slides, Iron Man?” Steve asked. There was a subtle undercurrent of wind noise that told him Steve was already outside, probably clinging to the side of the ship.

“21 seconds,” Tony said, struggling with the unfamiliar weight as he fought to both keep himself out of sight and prevent one of the slides from opening up in flight. Rather than up into the clouds, he was staying close the water, timing his entrance so he wouldn’t be visible to the patrolling guards. He really needed to work on a stealth suit.

“Grant, we’re almost ready out here. This is going to be sloppy and fast, and there’s a lot that’s going to go wrong, so everyone stay on your toes and do your best to keep the hostages calm,” Steve ordered. He took a slow breath, and said, “We go on your order, Grant.”

Gruff Man answered, “Understood, Captain.”

Tony acknowledged the order, but mostly just wanted to know when they’d had time to exchange names, and even in the massive mess they were in felt a little sting of jealous. Maybe they hadn’t needed to exchange names – maybe they already knew each other. Steve had spent a lot of time at SHIELD HQ, plenty of time to get to know people. Which was absolutely not anything Tony needed to be thinking about at _all._ He swooped up the outside of the vessel, coming to a messy halt by virtue of cutting his thrusters and grabbing a rail to Steve’s left. He made a clatter against the ship, but he doubted anyone noticed over the explosion that rocked the whole vessel a second later. Screaming echoed from inside the dining hall, a pair of shots popped off (Please let that have been straight up in the air), and then Steve and Natasha were up and over the balcony. Tony followed, dragging his cargo with him, and they hurriedly set the slides out. Speed boats were already roaring in behind them, and everything got very noisy, and started moving very quickly.

In a matter of moments, they had the slides deployed and people were rushing out the balcony doors. Tony watched in horror as some of the hostages just threw themselves over the side of the ship even while the Avengers were trying to herd them to the slides. He dove over the side to catch a women who was knocked off in the rush, breaking her fall and laying her in the water, even as three more bodies hit with sickening _cracks_. He dove under after a couple who’d jumped together and had to struggle out of their grasping arms once he had them to the surface. A dozen inflatable craft (F470 CRRCs, Jarvis helpfully provided, thank you) were already in the water, carefully navigating among the crowd of bodies to scoop them out to safety. It was total chaos. Tony got himself airborne and started snagging people out and depositing them in boats, while the larger crafts maneuvered up to the slides to get hostages out of the inflated platforms.

“May I suggest a light show, sir?” Jarvis broke in while Tony was doing his best to be in fifty places at once and not managing it.

“You have such beautiful circuits, Jarvis.” Dropping off two more women in a CRRC, Tony rocketed back into the air and flared every external light on the suit as bright as it would go, turning himself into a veritable second moon and bathing the cruise ship in bright light. Another startled cry went up, but the frightened hostages shrank away from the light, and for a few seconds there were no more bodies hitting the water from four stories up.

“Please proceed calmly to the nearest inflatable slide,” Jarvis helpfully announced for him, because his voice was perfect and calming, and his accent went over well. “Avengers and SHIELD personnel are on hand to assist you. Please do not jump from the railing.”

Tony directed his lights to the slides as makeshift spotlights, and he wouldn’t say that the hostages turned into a docile crowd, but the shoving and screaming went down a few notches.

“Thanks, Iron Man,” Steve called in obvious relief.

Tony would have answered, but Maria’s line popped up again with Jarvis’ stamp of approval in the corner. “I hear things are going swimmingly,” Tony answered and then winced, because, yeah. Maria nicely didn’t comment on his spectacularly badly timed pun, but it was possibly just for lack of time.

“Mr. White is on the line,” she said without preamble, and the line clicked over.

“Well played, Stark,” Oily said with rage drying out a little of the oil. Now that he was paying attention and he _remembered_ , Tony was all but positive that this was Killian himself.

“Not sure what you’re talking about,” Tony said obtusely, and then added, “You’re not still sore about that night in the elevator, are you?”

There was silence for several long seconds, punctuated by something like a breathy laugh. “And here I thought you didn’t remember me.”

“Hard to forget a face like yours. I’m sure there are people there by now who can help make you very comfortable on your way to your new home. How’s Maya, by the way?”

Definite rage boiled over the line, as thick as the oil had been, but Killian’s voice remained remarkably even all things considered. Impressive in a creepy sort of way. “Oh, I’m not done yet,” he said, and then his voice picked up in volume. “I know you’re still there, Hill. Tell your precious Avengers that I have hostages with me. I want a helicopter off this boat, and I want Tony Stark on it. I’ll leave the hostages somewhere soft once I’ve ensured that you’re not following me. I’m giving you five minutes.” He disconnected the line, and the timer reset, ugly and big, 4:58 and counting down too quickly.

Tony swore heatedly, only aware of the line still open to Maria by the quality of her silence. It was stupid of them to assume that they would have the hostages all in one place. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_.

“You’ve done your part, Stark,” Maria said once Tony’s cussing trailed off into simmering silence. Jarvis was already scanning the ship, looking for heat signatures. “We’ll take it from here. The director will probably want to talk to you tomorrow,” she added significantly. The only reason she didn’t hear his _fat chance_ was because she’d already hung up. Oh, he hated it when other people got the last word.

“Iron Man, you with us?” Steve asked, breaking into his line.

From his voice, Tony guessed that he’d been trying to get Tony’s – _Iron Man_ ’s – attention for a while. He took a calming breath before answering, “Yeah, I’m here. Sorry, playing middle man.”

“I guessed as much. There are SHIELD agents on the way to relieve us, but we’ve got another hostage situation on our hands. Turn off the lights and meet us on deck.”

“Roger,” Tony said, too tired and frustrated for quips. He clicked off the spotlights and angled for the main deck, tracking Steve’s progress as he climbed up over the railing with the shield on his back, Natasha and Clint right behind him, Thor winding his hammer up.

Tony landed on the deck just to one side of the pool, and Thor landed a second later, so close that Tony’s armor took a charge off the kinetic energy clinging to him. Normally he’d make a remark about how nice it was to be on a team with a walking battery, but he just didn’t have it in him. Thor reached over and clapped him on the back with a big hand, hard enough to make him stumble forward a step, even in the armor. “You have done well today, my friend,” Thor rumbled.

Tony didn’t feel like he’d done well. He dipped his head to acknowledge that Thor had spoken, but he didn’t respond. He didn’t know Thor well – the man had only been back on the planet for the last six weeks and Tony had been actively avoiding his team members outside of official business. He liked the big man well enough when he wasn’t being a pompous ass (yeah, yeah, pot, kettle, etcetera), but he wasn’t prepared to discuss how badly the whole thing had been bungled.

Steve, Natasha, and Clint spilled over the rail a moment later and came up behind them. Tony was aware of Steve the way he was always aware of Steve – a prickle on the back of his neck, a phantom sting in his wrist like the useless splash of color on his skin could feel its mate. Stupid.

“We’ve already got SHIELD agents sweeping from the lower decks up. We’re going to start here and work our way down. Hopefully we’ll end up with this _Mr. White_ character in between.”

“Killian,” Tony corrected. “It’s Aldrich Killian. Mr. Stark recognized him,” he added when Steve gave him a curious glance.

“Killian then. Let’s go.”

“No need, Captain.” Killian called out from the shadow of an overhang. Tony zeroed in on the sound of his voice immediately, picking up a faint sob in the process. “Mrs. Villa and I are just waiting for our helicopter. We have her three children here with us – or, excuse me, sorry, Mary. Her _four_ children.”

They’d each started to move forward and stopped immediately at the hitched sob that followed Killian’s announcement. There was a shuffle from the shadow, and then a pair of orange lights glowed to life in the darkness. Two steps and a sharp noise from his hostage and Killian was visible in the decklights, and _Jesus Christ_ , his eyes were glowing, burning orange like embers.

“What a pleasure to meet you all,” Killian said, moving forward another few steps. Three other forms moved behind them – one man tightly holding on to a pair of terrified twin girls, a woman with a nasty scar on her face and both hands on the shoulders of a boy who couldn’t have been more than 10, and the last man with a gun to Maya Hansen’s temple. The woman in Killian’s arms was very pregnant, and he had his weapon pressed to the swell of her belly.

“This doesn’t have to get ugly, Killian,” Steve tried, “Let them go, and we’ll let you leave.”

“And then who’s to say you’re not going to follow me?” Killian asked reasonably.

“You have my word.”

Killian laughed. “Captain America’s _word_ ,” he crowed. His lackeys laughed along with him. “You’ll have to forgive me if that doesn’t mean much to me, but A+ for effort, _old boy_.”

The superspies moved so fast that Tony didn’t realize they’d done anything at all until the men holding the children stumbled. The shots seemed to ring out _after_ they’d dropped. The mother recovered more quickly than Tony and, she screamed, “ _RUN_!”

She struggled hard in Killian’s grip, throwing her head back in a valiant, though unsuccessful effort to catch him in the face. Maya elbowed her captor in the stomach and made it two steps before she was caught and wrestled back, the man lifting her off the ground and all but throwing her back into the shadowy expanse.

The children took off with terrified shrieks, and Natasha stepped forward to scoop up the twins, Clint snagging the boy by the back of his shirt while Thor and Steve rushed up in a smoothly coordinated motion to shield them. Tony reacted a second too late to do more than get his hands up and repulsors charged.

“Sorry, Iron Man,” Steve said quietly once the kids were out of range, “We haven’t outfitted you with a silent com yet.”

Tony was distantly really _really_ angry. “Those haven’t been tested yet!” he hissed. They _had_ actually been tested by him and Jarvis, but he hadn’t tested them enough to put them on other people’s bodies. On _Steve’s_ body.

“They just were,” Natasha responded. She moved back up to Tony’s side, Clint coming up on the other, the children most likely passed off to SHIELD agents. “Tell your boss they work great. We’ll give him a report later.”

“You _really are_ making Mrs. Villa’s life very difficult right now!” Killian screamed, losing all pretense of the calm killer. He set his hand on the struggling woman’s stomach and it started to glow, heat radiating off of him in waves that Jarvis reported at 61 degrees Celsius. She shrieked, and he jerked his hand away after only a moment, but long enough to char her dress and put the scent of burning flesh in the air.

“And now your time is up,” he added, calmer, when the alarm on his watch went off and Tony’s timer hit 00:00.

“WAIT!” Steve shouted. They all lurched forward. Killian lifted the gun without aiming and shot at Maya, not seeming to notice or care when the man holding her went down too. She disappeared into the darkness, and the whole thing was so fast that Tony couldn’t even process it before he was pushing past Steve and Thor.

He didn’t stop at their hands on him, but Killian lifting the gun to the crying mother once more froze him in his tracks.

“My patience is up,” Killian said conversationally. “But I’m not unreasonable. I’ll give you three more minutes to have Tony Stark and my chopper here.”

Tony’s mind was flying with possible solutions, screaming incoherently in outrage and mourning, when Steve took half a step forward and said, “Take me instead.”

“Captain!”

“-Steve –”

“No!” The other three said, but Tony couldn’t unglue his tongue from the roof of his mouth. Steve’d had a lot of hairbrained ideas, but that one had to take the cake.

“So you can turn around and strangle me as soon as I let her go?” Killian asked with a laugh that verged on manic, and he was just absolutely cracked. He hadn’t really sounded insane before, but Tony could hear it in the bubble of his laughter.

“I’ll disarm myself,” Steve said, silencing the rest of the team with a sharp gesture of his hand. He set the shield down, followed it with his utility belt. “I’ll come over there naked if it will make you feel better.”

Killian’s lip curled in disgust and that was almost enough to make Tony speak, because what right did he have to be disgusted by _Steve_? “What the hell would I want you for, when I have the lovely Mrs. Villa already in hand?”

“I can understand why you’d think that,” Steve said, unzipping his chest armor and pulling it off, leaving him in a sweat-soaked long sleeved undershirt. Tony shuffled forward half a step without conscious thought, only stopping when Killian’s hand started to glow again and Steve gestured him back. Turning back to Killian, Steve held up both hands. “You want Tony Stark? We’ll get you the helicopter – take me with you, and I’m sure you’ll get him,” Steve concluded in that voice he got when he was lying, and he was such a bad liar, but Killian just narrowed his eyes while Tony’s stomach turned to ice and started leaking chill into his bones.

“Why’s that?” Killian asked, half suspicious, half curious.

Steve held up his arm and rolled his sleeve back. “Because I’m his mate.”

~*~

The silence fell around Steve like lead weights. He hadn’t wanted the announcement to go that way – a desperate part of him had been dreaming that Tony would come to him in the Avenger’s common room, declare that they’d made a terrible mistake and he couldn’t live another day without Steve by his side. It played out in his head as stupidly mushy, romantic comedy as it sounded, just like _The Notebook,_ but without the rain.

“Nice try,” Killian said, “But the whole world knows what Tony Stark’s Mark looks like. You can’t trick me with that line.”

Steve leaned over to grab the flashlight out of Clint’s belt. He held it up by the strap so Killian could see what it was when the madman flinched and the woman screamed. Moving slowly, Steve clicked the light on and turned it to shine on his wrist. Killian peered at him, so Steve worked carefully forward until Killian could see it clearly. If he could just make it another five feet, he would be in lunging distance.

“Well, how about that?” Killian said, lips stretching into a sinister smile. His teeth were glowing behind his lips, and it was an image that was guaranteed to visit Steve in his sleep for a very long time. “That’s far enough, I can see it fine. How many people did you have to bribe to keep that out of the papers?” Killian asked.

Steve didn’t respond. “Just let the girl go, I’ll come with you willingly. Tony will come for me, I promise you,” he lied right through his teeth. He knew Tony would do as much to get him free as he would do for anyone if he were taken hostage, but he also knew that there was no way anyone was letting Tony Stark fall into the hands of someone like Aldrich Killian (least of all Steve). Tony was too important. The band around his chest was going nuts with little pulses, too many of them to pick out anything coherent. He wished he could shut it off, but Killian was watching his hands like some kind of sharp eyed demon.

All at once, Killian shoved the woman forward, and then reached out and grabbed Steve by his wrist. The touch of his hand – too hot – on Steve’s Mark was nearly enough to make him shout in anger and disgust. He crashed into Killian’s chest as the woman went sprawling. His team moved fast and Thor had her off the deck almost before she hit it. He cast a glance at Steve, his eyebrows curled up in concern, and then whirled his hammer and was gone, the sobbing mother curled against his chest. Killian kept his hand curled tightly around Steve’s wrist. His fingers weren’t long enough to close completely around Steve’s wrist, but his grip was tight and his hand was getting hotter by the moment.

“I think I have better idea,” Killian said. “I know you could escape me, especially now that I’ve lost my leverage. But I’m not sure I care,” he continued. “See, I have Tony Stark’s mate literally in my hand. Do you think he’ll feel it when I burn your Mark off?”

Steve’s spine locked up and his stomach went cold, but he made himself smile. “I doubt it,” he said, tensing himself to flip Killian over his shoulder and put him into range for his teammates. He was distracted by the sound of movement behind them and missed his chance while Killian tightened his hold and demand, “Why not?”

“He rejected me. We’re not bonded.”

Killian’s hand flashed to sudden, scalding heat, a scream of rage bubbling up in his throat. The heat hit Steve so hard and so fast that he gagged. Pain flared up his arm, strong enough to make him go dizzy. His knees buckled and he dropped back against Killian’s chest. He would have hit the deck, but Killian’s other hand dug into his ribs to keep him upright. His left hand burned as well, but not as badly as the fingers wrapped around Steve’s wrist – he didn’t think he’d experienced so much pain since before the serum.

“ _STOP_!” a familiar voice shouted. The heat vanished from Steve’s wrist and he gasped, sagging, his hand coming up automatically to cradle his wrist. Killian’s hand lowered so it was an inch form Steve’s face, hot enough to make his skin tighten.

“Stop,” Iron Man repeated and Steve watched in horror as he reached up and twisted the helmet. It unlocked with a loud click. “I can feel it,” Tony said, staring at Steve from inside Iron Man’s armor.

Steve’s throat closed up, his vision went gray like he’d suddenly lost his color sight, the sound of his own heartbeat overwhelming him. He lost track of Killian, the _whumpwhumpwhump_ of a helicopter in the distance, the chaos of SHIELD sorting out the freed hostages. Tony’s face was white with anger, his lips pursed into a thin line, eyes bright and wide.

Killian started to laugh, a great howling noise that was more madness than anything. “Isn’t this rich?” He reached down and grabbed Steve’s wrist again, sending a fresh bolt of pain shooting up his arm and reminding him that he needed to deal with the situation in front of him. He and Tony could figure out this clusterfuck later. Steve gritted his teeth, more prepared for it this time, but Tony’s soft gasp of pain was louder to him than a gunshot.

The heat on his wrist abruptly vanished and Steve realized that he _had_ heard a gunshot. Killian’s entire body went white hot as Maya Hansen stumbled out of the shadows clutching her gut with one hand, holding a pistol in the other. Killian surged toward her with a scream, but Steve managed to twist and catch him by the throat. The heat of him seared the skin off Steve’s palm, but he was able to hold on long enough to shove the man away.

“Get away from him,” Maya gasped, “He’s going too hot, get away!”

Steve didn’t need to know what was going on to guess that the full-body glow wasn’t good. He grabbed Maya and dove away from a gout of fire as his team opened up on Killian, the distinctive whine of Iron Man’s ( _Tony’s,_ God) repulsors over the _barkbarkbark_ of Natasha’s gun and the _twang_ of Clint’s arrows. A lance of lightning shot down from the sky just as Steve reached his shield. He barely got it up in time to shield Maya from the shockwave of Thor’s lightning hitting the heat around Killian’s body. He was just barely aware of Iron Man (TONY) stepping in between them and Killian, the backs of his legs the only thing Steve could see around the shield.

“We have to get out of here!” Maya shouted. Her voice was weak and it broke into a whistle of air, but Steve got the point.

“Evacuate the ship!” Steve ordered, screaming himself hoarse over the firestorm. He gathered Maya into his chest and tried to stand, but the wave of heat against his legs sent him back to the deck.

“I’ve got you, Cap. Hold on,” Iron Man said – and it was Iron Man’s voice, as much as he wanted to hear Tony’s. There was a blast of cold air around them and then Iron Man’s familiar hands slid around the shield and scooped Steve up in a bridal carry that put Maya on top of him. He adjusted his grip so Maya was between his chest and Iron man’s, his shield out to keep her secure.

“Thor’s got Clint and Nat,” Iron Man reported as if reading his mind, blasting away from the deck and the brightly glowing Killian. Steve could just barely see over Iron Man’s arm as the bright light that was Aldrich Killian went from orange, to blue, to white. He had to close his eyes against the searing light, so he didn’t see the explosion, but he felt it as they went into a dizzying spin, Maya fetching up against the inside of the shield so hard that he almost lost her. He held her tight to his chest as they twisted and fell, Iron Man turning over to take the impact on his back as they crashed into the water at top speed. Steam rose up around them, and they skidded across the surface for several nauseating seconds before the water rushed over them.

Before Steve could even orientate himself to what was up and what was down, they were moving again, Maya still secure to his chest, Iron Man’s arms wrapped awkwardly around Steve’s shoulders and one leg. They broke through the surface with a great _pop_ and the hiss of air.

Steve’s ears were ringing, and everything seemed blessedly close and quiet. He prodded at the giant golden balloon that had deployed out around them.

“Did you install floaties in the suit?” Steve asked tiredly.

“Well, if a certain _someone_ would stop making water landings, I wouldn’t have had to.”

Maya moaned and Steve turned over on the raft that Iron Man had become to look at her. She was pale, barely conscious, her shirt soaked through with blood and seawater. Steve didn’t have any of his gear, but Iron Man helpfully opened a panel on his shoulder to reveal a roll of bandages and a tiny first aid kit. Steve got cautiously to his knees and pressed the pad of bandages over Maya’s stomach, though there wasn’t much else he could do until the boats reached them.

“We’re going to have to talk about this,” Steve said finally.

“Yeah,” Tony agreed, but he didn’t volunteer anything else, and Steve didn’t ask him to lift the faceplate.


	8. Kaleidoscope

It was a long night of sorting through survivors, checking names off against the passenger manifest, determining who hadn’t made it off the ship, and combing the surrounding waters for any signs of life. Five SHIELD agents had died in the explosion, along with about a dozen of the original hostiles at a best guess, and seven passengers were still missing.

Maya Hansen had been medevacked to the nearest hospital and was in critical condition. Tony had flown her up to the chopper so it didn’t have to land, and then stood on the deck watching it disappear into the distance. He hadn’t removed the helmet again, and the team was giving him a cautiously wide berth. Steve was grateful that the night’s work had kept them all too busy for conversation.

The cruise liner was still glowing against the lightening sky when Steve stepped into the makeshift medic tent. Half a dozen cots had been set up for more serious injuries, Natasha curled up on one at the far back. Probably the only reason she was still in the cot was that she’d been unconscious when they fished her out of the water. She blinked up at him slowly, medicated half up to her eyeballs, which was only marginally easier to do for her than it was for Steve and his super soldier biology. Steve crouched down next to her.

“Still alive?” he asked softly.

Natasha gave him a bleary-eyed look. “You’re not exactly my idea of an angel, so must be.”

Smiling, Steve brushed her hair away from her face. It was crusted with salt and laying in stiff tangles around her neck. “Ready to go home?” Steve asked. She promptly attempted to push herself up, so Steve slid an arm around her back, and the other beneath her knees. She made an annoyed sound, but set her head on his shoulder and let him carry her out. It wasn’t the first time he’d carried one of his teammates out of a medic’s tent – he’d pulled Clint out from under the EMTs twice, and had once dragged Iron Man – _Tony_ – out of the medics’ reach before they could figure out how to open the suit.

“Guess I’ve joined the club?” Natasha murmured against his neck.

Steve hummed an affirmative and adjusted his grip so she rested more comfortably against him. “Captain Rogers! Where are you going with my patient?” a doctor called, chasing after him.

“Taking her home, ma’am, thank you for your help.” Steve nodded at her, but she dodged around him and got into his path. She was a small thing – the top of her head only came up to his chin – but she wasn’t the least intimidated. Steve liked her.

“She needs to go to the hospital, Captain.”

He could practically feel Natasha’s glare hitting the side of his neck on its way to the doctor. “We have a state of the art medical facility at the tower,” Steve informed her, adding, “Your staff already cleared her to be moved, and I’ll make sure she gets the care she needs.”

“By which they meant _in a wheel chair_ , on her way to the _hospital_ ,” she snapped at him.

“Doctor Nelson! We need you in here!” a nurse called from the tent.

Steve tipped his head back to the tent and hiked an eyebrow at her. “She’s in good hands.”

“Doctor!”

The doctor pointed a finger up at Steve’s nose. “Do _not_ wrap those ribs. She needs to take deep breaths to reduce the risk of pneumonia. Monitor her for fever. See to it that she gets her prescriptions filled _and takes them, Ms. Romanov._ ”

“I will take excellent care of her. She will take her meds,” Steve promised, to Natasha’s obvious disgust. She grunted and tucked herself tighter to Steve’s chest, ignoring the doctor and Steve both.  Steve gave Dr. Nelson a smile and moved around her to the quinjet. Clint was waiting at the bottom of the ramp, nursing a set of bruised ribs of his own that he thought Steve hadn’t noticed. Steve gave him a look, and he winced, straightening up. His eyes flicked over Natasha in a quick assessment, and then lifted to meet Steve’s gaze. He nodded once and gingerly made his way up the ramp.

“Thor, Iron Man, Bruce come in. We’re going home.”

“I’m going to stay, Steve,” Bruce answered. “I’m assisting the SHIELD team in gathering evidence off the cruise liner.”

“Copy,” Steve said reluctantly. He wanted to insist that Bruce come home, but he wasn’t Bruce’s mother, and Bruce would do more good trying figure out what Killian’s plan had been. “Make sure you get some sleep and report in by 0700,” he said, because he still didn’t like the idea of leaving Bruce alone with SHIELD anyway.

“Will do,” Bruce said, and he sounded tired, but he also sounded like he was smiling.

Thor landed a moment later, gave Natasha a worried look, and passed Steve into the jet without a word.

“I’ll find my own way home,” Iron Man said.

Steve sighed. He wasn’t surprised that Iron Man chose to fly home on his own, but he was too tired, and too numb to feel anything in particular about it. Once he’d had about a thousand calories and a hot shower, maybe he would be annoyed, or angry, or hurt. He sat with Natasha on his lap for the trip back, and she dozed against his shoulder, her injured arm cradled against her stomach. She smelled like smoke, and her face was streaked with soot, but Steve could only hold onto her and count her heartbeats. Nat and Clint hadn’t had an Iron Man raft, and the blast had knocked her free of Thor’s grip, flinging her into the water with enough force to break her arm in two places, crack three ribs, and leave her skin a mottling of bruises. They were just lucky it hadn’t broken her neck.

“You plan on tracking Stark down tonight?” Natasha asked as they closed in on home.

Steve tensed – he’d thought she’d been asleep (and she should have been with as many drugs as they’d pumped into her). “Don’t know,” he answered finally. He wanted Tony – Iron Man, _Tony_ – next to him at that very moment, but he was honestly unsure of what he would have said. There was a knot inside his chest that grumbled faintly under all the numbness. Once he opened it up, anything from wrenching sobs to howling acid could pour out.

“Don’t give him too much time,” she said finally, her voice fading in and out and eyes blinking heavily up at him. “He’ll lock himself in the workshop and won’t come out for a month. Or ever.”

The assessment made him feel cold. His hands tightened on her automatically and she made a soft sound of discomfort. He released his grip immediately and shifted her into a more supported position, her face set against his neck. She moved gingerly, drawing her legs up closer and curling into him.

“Just don’t be stupid, idiot boys,” she said, and then trailed off into Russian, too quiet for him to catch, and Russian had never been his best language in the first place. After a moment, she was silent but for the gentle rush of her breath. It tickled where it brushed against his neck, but it was comforting too.

The rest of the trip back was quiet, everyone wrapped up in their own thoughts – or trying not to think. Clint set the quinjet down as gently as he ever did, but they all just sat there for several long moments. Thor’s face was a mask of shadows as he stared at Natasha in Steve’s arms, and that was something Steve would have to approach, because he could tell that Thor was eating himself up with guilt, and that didn’t do anyone any good, least of all Nat.

They were met at the bottom of the ramp by the onsite medical staff. Tony Stark really knew how to take care of his people – not many companies had a private medical wing that employees could access for next-to-free. Steve could not keep his mind away from Tony no matter how he tried. He set Natasha on the gurney and then snagged Clint by the strap of his vest when the archer tried to sneak past.

“Mr. Barton would like a checkup,” he said, nudging Clint toward the white-coated techs. Clint made a gesture to his ears and signed _What? My hearing aids aren’t working._ He shrugged and gave them a charming, albeit confused smile.

The tech smiled at him and signed back, _Not a problem, Mr. Barton. All the medical staff have become fluent in ASL since your last visit._

Clint gaped at them, turning to give Steve a mildly accusatory look as the tech took his arm in hand and led him away. Steve just shrugged and Clint set a hand on Natasha’s gurney, turning back around. Steve watched until they were in the elevator, and then let the tension in his shoulders go. Thor stepped up behind him, set a hand on his shoulder, and squeezed.

“Is there anything I may do for you, Captain?” Thor asked gently.

Steve’s Mark burned with the remembered heat of Killian’s grip under his wristband. He shook his head. “Do you want to go a few rounds?” he asked instead, even though he really just wanted a bed. No, he wanted more than a bed, but a bed would do.

“Let us save that for another time, Steven. But my thanks.”

“It’s not your fault, Thor.”

“I should have held her more tightly,” Thor argued quietly. “I should not have let go.”

“She lived, her injuries are fairly minor, she’ll be fine. We’ll drill carry-and-fly as soon as everyone is up to snuff again,” Steve offered.

Thor nodded, seemingly appealed. He patted Steve on the back twice as Jane and Darcy clattered through the stairwell door and rushed to meet him. Thor’s expression went soft and he squeezed Steve’s shoulder again. “Best of luck to you, Captain.”

Steve let him go without another word, standing in the hangar bay while it cleared out. He stayed still until Thor and the girls should have been at least ten floors down. The hangar echoed with his breath, loud and harsh, each inhale bottoming out and making his chest jerk. The scream that tore out of his throat clattered up in the rafters, shouting back at him in accusation. He screamed again, just because he could, reaching out and sending a tool chest flying. It hit the wall with a tiny crash, the drawers opening and tools flying up in a waterfall of chrome and steel. They tinkered to the epoxy floor with hollow, clattering sounds that didn’t make him feel any better. Steve stayed where he was for ten breaths, and then ten more. He waited until the urge to _break things_ had faded, but it didn’t vanish. He sucked it in, pushed it down, and started picking up the tools. There were nine hundred and thirty seven parts, and he managed to fit each one back into the drawer it belonged to, each drawer helpfully labeled for that purpose. The chest was dented, but all the wheels still worked. He grabbed a pad of sticky notes, scrawled _sorry_ across the top square, and left it on top of the chest.

Venting hadn’t relieved any of the tension, it had just made him feel tighter, too small for his bones, his suit stifling and too hot. Steve turned away from the elevator and took the stairs instead, hoping to work off some of the heat boiling up in his chest. He counted the stairs on the way down, each one a step closer to the solitude of his room. It was also one step closer to Tony’s workshop, but that didn’t. It didn’t matter.

Steve stopped and put his hand on what appeared to be a blank wall at the 45th floor landing. A square lit up under his fingertips, flashed green, and then disappeared. A section of wall jerked and slid back, revealing the door to the Avenger’s common room. He stared at it, swaying on his feet.

“Steve?” Jarvis prompted gently. “Do you require assistance?”

Steve jolted. “No. No, I’m. Fine,” he said. His arm was on fire with pins and needles, little electric shocks ghosting over his skin, the faintest impression of a thumb that wasn’t his over his pulse point. Jarvis made a frankly disbelieving sound that startled Steve – Jarvis had never been forthright about disapproval – but the AI didn’t say anything else. Steve clenched his hand into a fist and forged through the door. Instead of continuing to the hall that would lead to his bedroom, he made a sharp right hand turn and called for the elevator. It opened suspiciously quickly, and the doors closed just as quickly, sealing him in. Jarvis at least did him the courtesy of letting him call for the workshop, and Steve resisted the urge to ask what the AI would have done if Steve had called for the garage instead. He had a suspicious feeling that the elevator might have experienced a sudden technical issue and dropped him off at the workshop anyway.

The trip down seemed longer than usual and Steve grabbed the front of his belt to keep himself from dancing with the anxiety. His soulmate was at the end of this elevator ride. His _soulmate,_ and it had become apparent in the last several hours that they’d both fucked up so badly. The workshop door was already open when Steve stepped out of the elevator, making a cold spike of concern jolt though him. He’d never seen the door open before, and hoped that Jarvis was just being ‘helpful.’

He found Tony seated at a work bench, his back turned to the door, shuffling a shot glass between his hands, eyes glued on a bottle of scotch. The bottle was sealed, but Tony’s gaze was unnervingly intense on it. Steve stopped at the workshop door, not sure how to start, or why he’d come down to face Tony when he didn’t have a plan. The bottled up rage he’d felt in the hangar had fled and he just felt nervous and scared.

“You can’t kick me off the team,” Tony said. His voice broke through the silence, too loud and sharp. Steve winced. “I’m in the charter. You can’t. Not without –”

His shoulders fell, and through the foggy hesitancy that had fallen around his ears, Steve recognized the moment when Tony gave up. If Steve had _wanted_ to kick Tony – Iron Man – off the team, he’d need a vote. He’d need a _unanimous_ vote, and Tony thought that he would get it. Steve took another step forward, but Tony abandoned his seat, leaving the bottle and the shot glass. He moved with purpose across the workshop floor.

“You’ll need a replacement,” Tony said matter-of-factly, “Someone who can fly, someone with firepower. You won’t always have Thor. I have a list. You’ll like Sam Wilson, if you can steal him from Project Falcon –”

“Tony!” Steve choked out finally, his knees unlocking and carrying him to Tony’s abandoned workbench. He wished the bottle of scotch meant anything to him other than a burn in his throat, because he really use it.

“Of course the best option is Rhodey – James Rhodes, that is _Colonel_ James Rhodes. I’ve made him a suit. He’ll retire eventually, but maybe if you. You were a hero of his as a kid, he might just accept retirement if you ask.”

“ _TONY!”_ Steve thundered. He’d started to shake, his chest jumping and shivering in panicky little hitches, the way it used to before he had a fit. Tony stopped finally, but he didn’t turn to face Steve. He braced his hands on a table, shoulders hunched, head down.

Drawing in a shaky breath, Steve asked, “You think I want you off the team?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Tony sat down slowly, his back still turned to Steve. “Tony Stark isn’t exactly Avenger’s materia –”

“I begged for you,” Steve interrupted softly. Tony made a tiny, confused noise, but Steve kept going, “I looked at the man who rejected me –”

“ _I_ rejected _you_?!” Tony spun around, knocking his stool over in the process, but Steve had too much steam built up to be derailed, and he slammed a fist onto the table, shouting over him.

“–And I _begged_ to keep Iron Man on the team! You think I would want you gone after that?”

They stood across from each other, both of them red in the face with anger and hurt. Tony drew himself upright, his jaw clenched. “You were the one who said that as long as we didn’t touch, it wouldn’t form the bond. _It would be like we never knew_ ,” he snarled nastily.

Steve winced. He tried to keep his voice from shaking as he responded, “You looked at me like you would rather die than touch me.”

Tony just gaped at him, and Steve finally _looked_ at him. He was pale, dark circles under his eyes, bruises showing above the neck of the undersuit that promised his back and chest were an impressionist painting under the tight material. He was frozen with shock, wide-eyed and looked so much the same as he had _that night_ , that Steve felt his ribs suddenly trying to turn themselves inside-out. His lips fell open and no sounds came out, because what he’d thought had been _disgust_ on Mr. Stark’s face, was so clearly _fear_ on Tony’s that it was enough to break his heart.

“We need to stop this,” Steve said. The words ripped out of his throat before he’d even formed a coherent thought around them. “I am so sick of running myself through the heart to spare your feelings, and I am… _horrified_ that you’ve been sitting here doing the same thing.” Realizing the way that sounded from Tony’s flinch, Steve hurried to clarify, “I would have fallen on that sword for the rest of my life if it would have made you happy, but what are we doing? Hurting ourselves – hurting each other, because we can’t just communicate like adults? We need to stop this. I _do_ want you, Tony. I’ve waited for you my entire life. I want you on my team. I want to fight next to you, and fall asleep next to you, and I want to stop hurting you, stop hurting myself. Can we just?” Steve had enough words screaming through his head to fill up the Hudson, but he couldn’t make them come out, and that had been their problem from the beginning – running out of words. He held his hands up helplessly, waiting for Tony to _say something_ , save them from falling down this pit again.

Tony’s expression had shifted while Steve stumbled, warring between disbelief, anger, and something cautious and fragile. His eyes flickered to Steve’s right wrist, and then away again. His left hand twitched, and he pulled his arm subtly backward. Steve made a frustrated noise and clawed out of his uniform top, tearing the sleeve of his undershirt and sending his wristband flying. It ended up at Tony’s feet. He stared down at it, refusing to meet Steve’s eyes.

“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

Drawing in a slow breath, Steve said, “Tony Stark. I belong to you, and you to me. Will you do me the honor of –”

“Oh, God, stop,” Tony interrupted. He scrubbed his hand across his face, and Steve was shocked to see that his eyes were filled with tears. “Like a bad movie,” he said, mostly to himself, as he tugged the sleeve of his undersuit up. He offered Steve his left hand, the Mark seeming to glow dully in the light. “You’re all I ever wanted, idiot.”

“Not as formal as what I grew up with,” Steve said, but his chest felt suddenly too full, like he might just lift up and float away. He stepped around the table. “But I guess it’ll do.” Tony’s hand was shaking where he had it stretched away from his body. Steve’s hand was none too steady either as he reached out, but Tony jerked his hand back at the last moment.

“Are you sure, Steve? I’m not… I’m not _good._ You deserve more.”

Steve shook his head so hard that his vision blurred. “You are everything I want, and more than I deserve. Please.” He offered his hand out again, and just waited. Tony stared at his Mark, and then looked up at Steve. “We can do this. Together.”

Tony let his breath out in a slow stream and set his fingertips gently to Steve’s forearm. They both let out simultaneous sounds of shock. Steve’s skin lit up with a sudden awareness of the space around his body, every brush of fabric, every ache and pain. He curled his fingers up to press against Tony’s skin, and, for a flash of a moment, he was aware of Tony’s skin the way he was aware of his own. Closing his hand on Tony’s arm, he arched his wrist up so their Marks met.

The world lurched and spun, and then dissolved around him like sand. His stomach twisted like a wrung towel and he experienced a sudden jolt of vertigo. When his vision stopped spinning, he was standing in a bedroom with high ceilings, wallpapered in green. It was dark but for the glow of a bedside lamp and the pale light of a half-moon creeping in through the tall windows. Steve turned at the sound of a woman’s voice and found the speaker in a pale satin dressing gown, her hair still up in a fancy style. She sat on the edge of a bed that was far too big for the little boy tucked into the blankets.

“Mommy, what is this thing on my arm?” the boy asked, thrusting a thin arm out of the blankets and pulling his sleeve back. The light hit his Mark just right and Steve realized that it was Tony as a child, and this was Maria.

“It’s a soulmate Mark, dear,” Maria explained. She reached out and wrapped her fingers around his tiny wrist, rubbing her thumb over the edge of the Mark. “You’ve had it from the moment you were born.”

Tony frowned and pulled his arm away so he could look at it. He scratched his fingernails across it and Steve felt the faint echo of the scratches in his own Mark.

“You don’t have one,” Tony observed, grabbing his mom’s wrist and petting his little fingers over her skin. “What does it mean?”

“It means that there’s a special someone out there who’s just for you,” Maria explained, though she sounded sad. “Someone who will love you for just how special _you_ are.” She brushed his hair back and kissed Tony’s forehead. “And you are so special, my sweet boy.”

Steve took an involuntary step closer and the world spun again, the walls melting away to a set of concrete steps and an older Tony – maybe sixteen – sitting next to a young man with dark skin and a wide smile. They both had paper cups of coffee and textbooks stacked around them on the stairs. Tony’s hair was long enough to brush his collar. It curled at the ends and framed his face, and it was so much cuter than it had any right to be. Tony pushed his hair back away from his ears, the cuff of his sleeve riding up just enough to show the flash of a pink wristband set with sparkling gems. Steve smiled – it looked like just the sort of outlandish thing he could imagine a young Tony wearing just to throw off the people around him.

“So you’re Marked, huh?” the young man asked, glancing over at him.

“Rhodey. We’ve know each other for half the semester. I’m pretty sure everyone in the school knows I’m Marked,” Tony said with a snort. He took a deep swallow of his coffee and made a pleased little noise.

“Yeah, but you’ve never talked about it.”

“So that’s your oh-so-suave way to bring it up?” Tony guessed. He looked down at the pink wrist band, twisting it so the rhinestones caught the light. “Don’t need to talk about it. Doesn’t apply to what I’m doing here.”

“How do you feel about it?” Rhodey persisted, obviously curious. When Tony looked over to him, he explained, “My parents are Marked. Just not for each other.”

“Well, I haven’t found my soulmate, so I guess I have no useful information for you.”

“I don’t know,” Rhodey continued as if Tony hadn’t spoken, “It almost seems like it would be worse to be Marked. How could you ever really… connect to anyone, knowing that this person might walk into your life someday?” He gestured to Tony’s wrist, and Tony yanked his arm back into his jacket, tucking it against his stomach. The vulnerable gesture made Steve’s heart squeeze. He moved cautiously closer, and then more boldly when he realized the scene wasn’t shifting. He sat down at Tony’s feet and reached out to touch him. Tony shivered as if he’d felt it, frowning.

“Yeah, how could I?”

“Tony, man, I didn’t mean –”

Tony waved him off with a bright grin that Steve could tell was forced even if Rhodey didn’t know him well enough yet to realize it. “It’s fine. Besides, I know you’re just jealous that you’re not my One and Only.”

Rhodey snorted. “Thank God for small favors, is all I’m saying.”

Tony bumped Rhodey’s shoulder and the stairs fell out from under Steve’s knees. He dropped down through a swirling maelstrom of darkness and flickering blue lightning, and landed ass-first on a grassy hill. He lost his balance and spilled down it in a kaleidoscope tunnel of _greenbluegreenbluegreenblue._ Steve fetched up hard against a solid block and lay stunned for a second, his stomach still twisting. He pushed himself up after half a dozen breaths to realize that he was in a cemetery. The day was cheerfully bright, completely in contrast to the sad crowd gathered around a pair of double graves. Steve climbed to his feet and crossed the grass to stand at Tony’s side through his parents’ funeral.

Tony didn’t say a word, didn’t shed a tear. Steve recognized Obadiah Stane from Tony’s SHIELD file and nearly took a swing at the man when he wrapped an arm around Tony’s shoulders. Tony shrugged out from under him and walked away. Steve stayed just long enough to watch the irritation and rage flicker over Stane’s face, and then turned to follow. Tony maintained a casual walk until he was out of sight of the funeral party and then broke into a run that Steve scrambled to match. Tony wasn’t in any particular shape, but he was young and full of rage and grief. He ran flat out for over a mile until his body forced him to stop, clutching at his side and gasping in air. He stumbled away from the road, and into a copse of trees, weaving drunkenly until gravity finally got the better of him. Tony dropped to his knees among the bushes and shoved his face into the ground. He screamed for all his lungs were worth, sucked in a breath that had to have been more than half dirt, and screamed again.

Steve stood beside him, feeling that scream in his chest like it was his own. A sob hitched in his throat and he collapsed to his knees at Tony’s side, wanting more than anything to be able to put his arms around him. Tony fell to his side and curled into a ball, sobbing and choking on his own breath. He kicked out blindly, unknowingly nearly hitting Steve in the chest. Yanking his wristband off – black with a white Stark Industries logo at the hem – and glared at his wrist.

“Where are you?” Tony demanded of his skin.

“I’m right here,” Steve tried, but the words sounded hollow like he’d been closed in a glass box and his voice was just pushing back at him.

Tony glared at his wrist. “I hate you,” he said, “I hate you, and I want you here, and where are you?”

“Tony, oh… oh, I’m so sorry,” Steve whispered.

Closing his eyes, Tony pulled his left arm to his chest and curled up into a small ball. Steve reached out for him and just barely felt the ghost of Tony’s shoulder under his palm, Tony shivering at his touch, and then the grass beneath Steve’s knees wove together. Steve fought to hold the scene where it was; he knew that Tony had survived this moment, and Steve remaining wouldn’t change the outcome, but he felt a surge of anxious panic at leaving him alone. No matter how hard he tried to concentrate, how hold he tried to hold onto Tony’s shuddering form, the color bleached out, Tony faded, and Steve was left kneeling on an office carpet.

“Pepper, Pepper-pot, Peppums –”

“No, Tony,” Pepper cut off, striding into the room behind him.

Steve lost the next exchange, staring at the carpet and willing the twenty-two year old Tony back, the one who’d called for him when he hadn’t been there. He looked up just in time to see Pepper step on what looked like a Lego block. Her stiletto twisted under her and the stack of papers in her arms went flying. Tony jerked toward her, but he was too far away.

Happy all but threw himself under her and they both went down in a tangle, Happy landing hard on his back and Pepper dropping on top of him.

“Happy, oh my god, I’m sorry –”

“-Fine, Miss Potts, fine –”

“-Are you _okay_?”

“Let me help you –”

Both of their voices just stopped. Steve realized what had happened just a moment after Tony did. Pepper and Happy stared at each other, still on the floor, Happy’s hand wrapped around her arm. They moved, trancelike, to take wristbands off and press their arms together.

Tony’s face couldn’t have been any paler if he’d been exsanguinated. He sat roughly in the office chair. “Close the blinds,” Tony said, seeming to sink into the leather. The blinds slid shut all around them, closing the private moment off from any potential prying eyes, but Tony seemed unable to look away from them. He breathed slowly, carefully, repeated the process for half a dozen breaths. Finally, he turned away. Steve stood and moved around the desk. Tony’s lips twisted into something approximating a smile, and he looked down at his wrist, thumb moving restlessly over the simple black band. Steve found that he missed the pink one.

“That was bound to happen,” Tony said to his hand. Steve reached out to set a hand in his, watching for the shiver that rippled through his frame. As horrible as the scene was, Steve couldn’t help a tiny smile of his own – he’d decided as a kid that every time he felt that shiver, it was his soulmate saying ‘hello,’ and maybe he hadn’t been too far off the mark. After a pair of heartbeats, the little shiver turned into a full body convulsion and Tony yanked his hand away from Steve’s grip, shaking it out.

“You will never be alone again, I promise,” Steve swore, still kneeling at Tony’s side. Tony turned, and for just a moment, their eyes met. Steve felt his Mark burn, and then the world collapsed around him again.

Impressions and memories came swiftly after that, an overwhelming storm of scenes that jumped from Tony’s seventh birthday, to the week he spent in a filthy dump drugged out of his senses, the cave that had made him into Iron Man, playing fetch with Dum-E, the moment when he turned Jarvis on for the first time, the first time he had a sex with a woman, and the last time he’d kissed a man, and it was all moving too quickly to process, too much to make any solid footing. Just when Steve thought he was going to lose his mind, the images stopped and left him in the dark.

The tingle faded from his skin, and Steve became aware of the workshop again – concrete, storm gray and blue, Iron Man the only pop of color. Tony was pressed against his chest, sobbing and gasping for breath, but Steve wasn’t in any better shape. They’d fallen to their knees at some point, Steve curled over Tony’s head, wrapping him up.

“I’m sorry I made you wait so long,” Steve whimpered. “I’m so sorry.”  

Tony pulled away from him, brushing roughly at his cheeks. “If the Fateists are right, you crashed a plane in the ocean and _died_ to meet me. I think I can forgive you for taking a few decades to wake up.”

~*~

Tony had fantasized about what touching his soulmate would be like. He’d imagined it as a lightning bolt to the back of the neck, like being plunged into a fire, like cool water, like wrapping his hands around a hot mug of coffee. He’d read all those stupid soulmate romances, and he’d watched all the sappy rom-mate-coms where they made bonding look like home movies played on fast forward, all cast in golden light and soft around the edges. He’d fallen asleep high on this-or-that and imagined that bonding must be like an acid trip.

Steve’s skin touching his was none of those things, and all of them. It was a sudden impression of great pressure, warmth, and power. It was like Iron Man wrapping around him, it was being safe, but better because he wasn’t isolated. He felt Steve’s pulse thrumming against his Mark, and it felt like a feather boa wrapping up around his shoulders and nuzzling his face.

The power went out.

“Jarvis?” Tony called, confused. “Jarvis, what’s up with the lack-of-lights show?”

A tiny cough was his only answer. Tony twisted, panicking when he realized that Steve’s hands were no longer wrapped around his. He was in a small, dark room that smelled of dust and the residue of burning coal. Another cough rang out in the room, accompanied by a pained-sounding wheeze, and followed by a gentle shushing.

“Stevie, take a deep breath, it’s okay,” a woman said. “You’re going to be fine. Do you see this Mark on your arm?”

Tony crept slowly closer. The only light came from a single flickering candle at the bedside, and it was barely enough to make out a woman’s face. She was drawn and thin, her dark hair a messy halo around her face. In the bed beside her was a little boy  who was just as thin, his face cast in such deep shadow that he looked more skeleton than human.

The woman took the little boy’s hand in hers and turned it over. “You see this, here, Stevie? It means you have someone out there who’s waiting for you. You have to be strong for them, because they’re going to need you.”

“Okay, mama,” the boy whispered and then convulsed into another fit of coughing and gasping. Tony took a shaky step forward. He sat very slowly at the edge of the bed, finally realizing what he should have from the beginning – this was _Steve_.

“Hang on, baby,” Sarah Rogers said, her voice thick with tears, “You’re going to be just fine.”

Tony couldn’t stop himself – he reached forward and put a hand on Steve’s tiny knee. The boy convulsed in a sudden shiver that scared Sarah three-quarters to death. Tony yanked his hand back so violently that he stumbled off the bed and landed on his back in the middle of a dirty alley. The sun struck him in the face. Tony blinked up at the slice of muddy sky, sounds slowly filtering in around him and resolving into children shouting. He pushed himself up to a seated position, legs still splayed out in front of him. A tiny blonde-haired boy was standing to his left. The boy lowered his head like a battering ram and screamed a battle cry as he barreled into a pair of older kids holding a third boy down in the street.

Tony might not have known what a ten year-old Steve looked like, but he would have recognized that bullheadedness anywhere. The older boys went down like dominos and Tony barked out a startled laugh.

“You let ‘em up!” Steve screamed; he hadn’t even gotten up far enough from his crouch to realize that he’d knocked the bullies clean off their victim. Their victim wasn’t exactly a scrawny kid himself – probably twice as big as Steve was himself, dark hair and broad shoulders. He dragged himself up from the dirt and leaped directly onto the tumbling dogpile that the fight had turned into. One of the bigger kids had managed to get Steve on his back, not that Steve was at all deterred by this, and he was squirming and flailing like a wildcat. The dark-haired boy landed a solid punch on one of the bullies’ chins and then took a page out of Steve’s book and barreled into the kid sitting astride Steve’s hips. They went over with a shout and Steve squirmed out from between their legs to chase after the kid who was getting away.

Tony sat in the dirt and laughed. Steve made it to the mouth of the alley before his breath gave out on him. He stopped to put his hands on his knees, doing his best to shout after the kid while simultaneously fighting to breathe. In the meantime, the dark-haired kid got one more good punch on his bully and then stumbled up to his feet.

“Git!” he screamed, and the kid – crying and holding his nose – scrambled up and peeled out.

Steve had dropped to his knees at the mouth of the alley, so the bigger kid walked over and patted him on the back. Tony got up and followed them, feeling a little guilty spying on a pair of kids, on this private moment of Steve’s. “Hey, you gon’ live?”

Steve pushed him off. “’M fine.”

“My name’s Bucky.” He held out a grubby hand.

Steve’s expression went from annoyed to pleased in half a second. He took Bucky’s hand and shook it firmly, even though he was still struggling to breathe and looking a bit peaked. “Steve.”

Bucky slung an arm around Steve’s shoulders and hauled him upright. Steve caught onto his wrist. “Hey! You’re Marked!”

Steve jerked his hand away, hiding it behind his back, but Bucky – that little shit – reached over and pried his hand back up. “That’s real neat,” he decided after Steve had wrenched his hand back. “Ain’t never seen a real Mark before. It feel any different?”

“No,” Steve said regretfully. He stared down at his wrist, and then, for no reason that Tony could see, looked right up at him. Their eyes met for a moment, and Steve shivered. “Don’t feel any different.”

Tony reached out to touch him again, but Bucky tugged him out of reach. “C’mon. Bet we can find some rocks to hit, and I got a real bat!” The pair of them took off running. Tony tried to follow, but he turned the corner onto a concrete square bustling with people instead of the sidewalk he’d expected. A taller, readily recognizable version of Bucky brushed past him with a girl on each arm.

“Steve!” Bucky called, and Tony’s eyes followed the direction of his gaze. Steve stood with a paper cone in either hand, looking awkward and like he’d rather be just about anywhere else. Bucky introduced _Susan_ and _Mary_ , seamlessly passing Mary over while Steve fumbled with the paper cones to shake her hand. She gave him an unhappy grimace that almost passed for a smile. The look of contempt made Tony want to tear her away, but instead he just fell in step next to Steve as they squeezed into a dance hall.

Bucky swung his date right onto the floor, but Steve eased himself along the wall. Mary followed, obviously even more unhappy with this development. She had her coat in between her hands and glanced down at her watch.

“So I guess you’re Marked,” she said abruptly, like she was trying to make small talk.

Steve winced. “I am, yes.”

She nodded and looked away, drawing her lip in between her teeth and tapping her foot. Steve looked in the other direction, fiddling with his paper cone of popcorn, and obviously didn’t want to be standing next to her any more than she wanted to be standing next to him.

“It must be hard,” the girl blurted out after another minute, “I mean, trying to date with being Marked and all.”

Steve let out a little self-deprecating laugh. “Little bit,” he said.

“But at least you know there’s that perfect someone for you out there,” she said, and didn’t have to voice _it’s sure as hell not me._

Seething, Tony opened his mouth to tell her to fuck off, but Steve gave her a sweet smile and offered, “I’ll hold your coat for you if you want to dance.”

“Oh, would you?” she gushed, shoved the coat into his hands, and was off in the crowd.

Snorting out that soft self-shaming laugh, Steve looked down at his wrist. “Guess it’s just you and me again,” he said.

Tony felt a warm rush was much more okay with the snooty girl who didn’t want to give a Marked man a chance. “I would dance with you if I could,” Tony said. “I’m going to take you out on the town and show you off to everyone with eyes. Our faces are going to be on every social media page in the country.”

Steve hummed along with the music, tapping his foot to the beat and munching through one cone of popcorn, and then the other. Tony stood next to him for the rest of the evening, detailing all of their dates to come, rattling on about his own first date and what a mess it had been – Rhodey had _not_ been amused when he realized that Tony didn’t just have a baby face, he was way underage. He followed Steve up to the bar for a pint of something cheap, and then back to the wall. Mary eventually came back to get her coat and left in a giggling heap with Susan. Bucky appeared a moment later, his sleeves rolled up and shirt open at the collar. He collapsed back to the wall next to Steve.

“Come on, wallflower,” Bucky said, “Let’s see the girls to a cab.”

“Sure,” Steve said amicably, but Tony could tell he was happy to get away from that wall. Tony reached forward and brushed his hand as he passed, and Steve shivered, looking around briefly. He shrugged further into his coat and turned back to Bucky.

Tony took a step forward and his foot landed on concrete instead of wood. The dance club’s low light flickered out and then flared into fluorescent brightness. Tony flinched and put a hand up to shade his eyes. He stumbled forward a step, turned around at the clatter of heels on metal, and unintentionally looked right up Peggy Carter’s skirt.

“Aunt Peggy!” Tony snapped accusingly, as if it were her fault. She clattered down the stairs, unmindful of the eyeful he really hadn’t wanted. Steve was just half a step behind her, looking wide-eyed and terrified, but he had that same bullheaded look on his face that he’d had when he was ten, the same look he’d had forging into a pitched battle of flying aliens. It took longer than it should have for Tony to realize that this was Project Rebirth at its completion. He spun around and froze. Howard stood by a bank of controls, looking manic, and _alive_ the way Tony had never seen him. Howard had been in his fifties by the time Tony was born, and he’d lost of all _this_ , whatever it was, this excitement with life and the unknown.

“It’s a little chilly,” Steve said from behind him. Tony tore his eyes away from his father’s young face and back to Steve, climbing onto that big green mattress pad in nothing but a pair of shorts. Tony dodged around a tech hurrying past with an instrument tray and stopped at Steve’s side. Erskine moved in next to him, forcing Tony to crowd up around the wires. Steve looked so small and pale and thin on the mattress. Eriskin touched Steve’s right arm with two gentle fingers.

“You have someone waiting for you?” he asked kindly.

“No,” Steve answered, twisting to look down at his wrist. “I mean – they’re somewhere. I just haven’t met them yet. I will someday,” he said with such certainty that Tony couldn’t help but smile. Erskine set a hand on Steve’s shoulder to give him a reassuring squeeze that Steve didn’t seem to find reassuring. As soon as Erskine moved away, Tony gripped the same shoulder. Steve shivered hard, and then again, more violently.

“I’ll stay with you,” Tony said, even though he’d seen the tapes and he really didn’t want to hear Steve screaming without the filter of shitty recording technology to dull it down.

Steve turned his wrist over and looked down at his Mark, unknowingly looking right through Tony’s in the process. “Guess it’s just you and me again,” he said softly, and Tony felt a shiver of his own. He stepped away as the procedure started, crossing his arms over his chest. He felt a phantom ache in his chest as the coffin settled around Steve, and the stupid brave bastard made jokes like he wasn’t scared half out of his mind. And then the screaming started. Tony’s chest went tight, the arc reactor seeming to throb against his sternum. He pressed his hands against the outer casing of the chamber and did his best to block out Afghanistan, the ghostly sensation of water in his lungs, the frequent shocks of the car battery that had kept him alive in those first terrible weeks. Steve screamed on and on until his voice gave out, and it was so much worse than the one time Tony had let the tape play through. Tony against the tank when the light show finally stopped.

The lid of the tank split away, spilling Tony on to his ass. He ended up at Steve’s feet when he was revealed, shiny and new, a hundred and fifty pounds heavier and in so much pain that Tony ached for him. People started moving all over the room. Tony crab-walked out of the way as Steve spilled out of the tank, Erskine and Howard rushing forward to catch him, Peggy appearing out of nowhere with the first of what would become a trend of too-tight shirts, thank you, Aunt Peggy.

As soon as Steve was steady on his feet, he twisted his arm over and looked at his Mark, letting out a gusty sigh of relief when he realized it was still there. He touched it with two fingers like he was feeling his own pulse, and Tony felt the contact against his skin.

Tony leaned back shakily, his hands out to support him, but the ground wasn’t where he’d expected. He collapsed into the mud with a startled squawk. Gun fire burst over his head and he automatically pulled his right fist into his chest, his left hand splayed out away from his body, calling for the suit.

“Drop that sniper, Buck!” Steve snapped.

Two sharp cracks sounded to Tony’s left, _snapsnap_ , and silence fell over the trees. “I’d like to say you’ve got bossier since you got bigger,” Bucky started, “But pretty sure your body finally just caught up to your sass.”

Steve, covered in mud, and looking radiantly happy just reached over Tony’s chest and shook Bucky by the shoulder. “Wouldn’t have to sass you if you’d drop ‘em the first fuckin’ time,” Steve said.

“Language!” Tony gasped out automatically, and Steve flinched as if he’d heard. He drew his hand back, thumb just barely ghosting over Tony’s lips. He shivered sharply.

“Thought you didn’t _get_ cold anymore, Captain Spangles,” Bucky muttered, obviously teasing, but his voice was a little grim under his smirk.

“Not cold,” Steve said, peering through a pair of binoculars. “Just my soulmate saying hello.”

Tony jolted in shock, but Bucky didn’t seem to notice him, or think anything was off about the statement. Steve’s attention focused in on something on the ground, and before Tony could get his wits around him, Steve and Bucky were both over the hill and sliding down to the road.

Tony moved to follow, but the dirt under hands turned to hard metal and Tony was leaning against an instrument control panel, wind whistling through a broken window with an expanse of gray, icy water stretching out beneath him. He heard Steve’s voice and turned. It didn’t take him nearly as long to figure out where they were.

“Steve!” Tony called over the wind as if Steve might hear him, “God, you stupid, stubborn…” Steve’s eyes were focused right through him, locked onto the water getting too close too quickly. Hand-over-hand, Tony pulled himself along the console to the pilot’s chair. He tried to put himself between Steve and the window, reaching out blindly to grab his wrist. “I’ll stay with you,” he said uselessly, licking his lips, trying to avoid staring out the window.

Steve shivered hard and managed a watery smile. “Hello,” he said softly. “Guess it’s just you and me again.” His eyes lifted from where Tony’s fingers were curled around his wrist, unknowingly looking right at Tony. “You’re always here for me, and I am _so sorry_ that I’ll never be there for you.”

Entire body wracked with shudders, he dragged his hand away from the yoke just long enough to kiss the inside of his wrist. Tony felt the echo of it on his fingertips, a feather light touch. He curled forward over Steve’s head like he might be able to protect him. The nose of the plane angled into a steep dive. Steve kept his eyes open the whole way down.

The impact tossed Tony into a storm of memories – Steve’s first day at school, his mother’s funeral, laying in the grass with Bucky at his side making shapes out of the clouds, every recruitment station he forged into, art school, working at the corner grocery, Peggy and Bucky and the Commandos, dropping out of a plane, _do you fondue?_ Steve staring at his new body for the first time in a mirror and crying softly in the night for the remembered horror of it, and then icy darkness. Tony managed a thin breath, and then the cold gave way gentle warmth, floating in warm water rather than drowning in the arctic. The concrete floor of the workshop slid up to cradle his knees and Steve’s warm chest was pressed to his forehead. He sucked in smoke-scented air, choking on it, struggling to breathe around the crushing weight on his chest, and so filled up with warmth and light that he was going to explode from the force of it shoving at his spine.

“I’m sorry I made you wait so long,” Steve gasped out against his hair. “I’m so sorry.”

Tony couldn’t even process the apology after holding Steve’s hand while the plane went down over the arctic. He pushed back from the safety of Steve’s arms and roughly wiped the tears off his cheeks.

“If the Fateists are right, you crashed a plane in the ocean and _died_ to meet me,” Tony said, because he said stupid things a lot, “I think I can forgive you for taking a few decades to wake up.” He would have forgiven him a lot more than that, but Steve’s mouth came down on his, messy and insistent and burning hot, and Tony decided that was plenty enough thinking for the next seventy-two hours. At least.


	9. Epilogue

Steve lay in a hazy half-sleep. The bed was a mess, and the sheets really needed to be cleaned, but he was warm, and Tony was asleep on his chest. The arc reactor dug into his ribs, but he didn’t mind as long as Tony was comfortable and stayed beside him. He’d known that bonding was an intense experience, but nothing had prepared him for that first day where he could barely handle the touch of the air on his skin if Tony wasn’t pressed against him. It had been intense almost to the point of being manic, and he was glad that most of that franticness had mellowed out of them by the end of the first day.

He ran an idle hand through Tony’s hair, flexing his toes back to stretch his calves. As soon as he did, the rest of his muscles started complaining for attention. He hadn’t spent so much time in bed since that last time he was down with influenza in 1938, and his body wasn’t appreciating all the time spent horizontal, no matter how much the rest of him enjoyed it.

“Stop it,” Tony muttered against his chest, “If you keep doing that, we’re going to have to get out of bed.” He burrowed further into Steve’s side, his face pressed into Steve’s armpit, one hand landing across his throat.

Steve tried to settle back down, but his neck was starting to ache. He stretched his head over to his right shoulder, fingers running circles on Tony’s hip. Tony tried to ignore him, but only made another two minutes before he finally made a huffy, catlike noise, and sat up.

“Fine, go bench press or a motorcycle or something.”

Steve sat up with him, wrapping his arms around Tony’s neck and nuzzling his ear. “I bet I can bench press _you_ if you want to come along.”

Tony gave him a bleary-eyed look and twisted to bury his face against Steve’s neck. He bit down, making Steve suck in a sharp breath, and then released the mark with a wet _pop_. “Probably a better idea of I pass,” he said with obvious reluctance. “For now.”

Steve thought about protesting, but they’d hardly been out of contact for forty-eight hours, and some time apart would probably be a good idea for both of them. He planted a kiss on Tony’s cheek and shoved himself out of bed before he changed his mind, heading for the shower. Behind him, Tony collapsed back to the blankets with a loud groan and the _fwoosh_ of the feather comforter.

~*~

“We didn’t spend the _whole_ time in bed,” Tony was saying when Steve stepped out of the bedroom. “We showed, and ate, and spent time on the kitchen floor, and on the couch, and in the workshop –”

“–I do _not_ need any more details, for the love of God, Tony.”

Steve froze in the hallway and quickly backtracked. He’d thought Tony had been speaking to Jarvis, and had been prepared to walk into the living room naked. He felt heat on his cheeks as he ducked back into the bedroom for a pair of Tony’s loose sweatpants, and a t-shirt that was even more chest-hugging than usual.

Pepper and Rhodey were at the breakfast bar with their backs turned to Steve as he made it out of the hallway.

“You put on clothes,” Tony complained, pouting at him from the other side of the bar. He was at least shirtless, and had a knife in hand.

“Do you need me to bring you pants?” Steve asked. He smiled at Pepper and Rhodey, unexpectedly excited to see them – he didn’t know either of them well, and Rhodey only by name, but he _felt_ like he’d known them for years.

“I’ve got nothing that anyone here hasn’t seen,” Tony replied, winking.

Ignoring Tony’s flirting, Rhodey slid off his stool and offered Steve a hand, his expression grave and shoulders straight, another military man meeting Captain America. Steve was disappointed by it, but he took Rhodey’s familiar-not-familiar hand in his and gave it a firm squeeze.

“Pleasure to meet you, Colonel.”

“Mmhm.” Rhodey narrowed his eyes and switched their grip so Steve’s Mark was visible. It had turned gold in the center, though neither of them had noticed for almost a day. Steve watched Rhodey curiously, not offended by what would have been an inexcusably rude gesture from anyone else because it was _Rhodey_. “Hope you two are pleased with yourselves after the months of being stupid.”

Steve flushed faintly. “We were _very_ stupid,” he agreed.

“And now very pleased,” Tony added. He threw a chunk of green apple at the back of Rhodey’s head, earning himself a glare. “The shovel talk isn’t going to work.”

“Think that’s gonna stop me?” Rhodey asked. He still had Steve’s wrist in his hand and looked annoyed that Steve wasn’t bothered by it.

“I was just going to hit the gym for a few hours,” Steve offered, gently tugging his wrist away. “Did you want to join me? Shovel talks are more effective with weapons, anyway.”

“I like him,” Pepper decided as Steve made it into the kitchen for a protein drink. He stopped to kiss Tony on the cheek and steal a cube of his apple, giving Pepper a wide, stupid smile over Tony’s shoulder. Tony was wearing a pair of cotton boxers that hugged his hips lovingly, and mismatched socks with cartoon Iron Mans on them. How he’d managed to keep his secret for so long was a mystery to Steve now that he’d been noticing all the signs.

“You would have liked him better if he’d come out here naked,” Tony persisted, gesturing with the knife.

“Speaking of. It is really interesting that Jarvis didn’t warn me we had company,” Steve mused in response, stealing another cube of apple and diving back into the fridge for a pair of water bottles.

“That _is_ interesting,” Tony said innocently.

“Quite,” Jarvis drawled.

Steve tossed one bottle of water to Rhodey and gestured him to the elevator. Rhodey grunted, gave Tony a _look_ , and headed for the elevator.

“Don’t break each other!” Tony called after them.

~*~

Tony fidgeted nervously with his left cuff. For the first time since he was five, he was out in public without his wristband, and not in the suit. It didn’t matter that his sleeves covered his wrists, he felt as vulnerable as an exposed wire. Steve reached over and curled their fingers together, giving Tony a shy sideways smile. Considering everything they’d done with and to each other over the past three days, shy was ridiculous. And charming. So ridiculously charming. Tony squeezed his hand, and then let him go as the elevator doors opened.

Clint and Natasha were side-by-side on the couch. Natasha had a tub of ice cream in her lap and was casually fending Clint off as he tried to get under her guard with a spoon. She looked up at them as the doors _ping_ ’ed open, poking Clint on one cheek with her spoon and using it to turn his head.

Tony stepped out of the elevator as casually as he could manage. He’d faced more hostile rooms before. He’d called a congressional committee _assclowns_ , had stood in front of a board room of corrupt fatcats who’d been getting more and more fat under Obie’s leadership and would have sooner seen him drawn and quartered than in command of the ship. He’d faced down monsters, aliens, and terrorists. He’d even once given a presentation to a classroom of fifteen year olds. A couple spies shouldn’t have been enough to make him quake.

“About time,” Natasha said, her eyes narrowed. “So nice of you to rejoin the world of the living.”

Tony’s wit failed him. He just stared at them, but he couldn’t quite get his eyes up to Clint’s face.

“Any news while we’ve been away?” Steve asked, casual and calm, business as usual. He squeezed Tony’s wrist, sending a wash of warmth radiating out of his Mark, and stepped away. Tony had to shove his hand in his pocket to keep from reaching out and stopping Steve from leaving him.

“Roxxon is in some major shit,” Natasha reported as Steve crossed the room to the kitchen, leaving Tony standing awkwardly in front of the elevator, “Special committees have been formed to discuss the formation of committees who will engage in investigative processes to determine who is at fault for the fiasco of AIM.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Tony finally managed. She smirked, giving him a nod of acknowledgement. Clint was ignoring him, poking into Natasha’s ice cream while she was distracted. Tony rocked back on his heels. Other than the massive wall that was his soulmate, Clint had always been the stumbling block whenever Tony had considered revealing himself. Natasha and Bruce understood alternate identities, and he didn’t think Thor cared enough about him one way or another to make a fuss, but Clint wasn’t exactly on Tony Stark’s #1 Fan mailing list.

“Maybe we should… team meeting?” Tony suggested finally, feeling more awkward than he had since his first day of high school. His hand clenched in his pocket.

“Why?” Natasha asked, knocking Clint’s spoon out of the way and scooping up a small mountain of ice cream. “SHIELD and DHS are handling Roxxon. We have nothing else on the schedule until Tuesday, next team meeting is scheduled for tomorrow.” She shrugged.

Tony’s eyes flickered to Clint, who finally dropped his spoon into Natasha’s ice cream and signed, _your medical staff are assholes._

Tony hesitated, but signed back, _they took it on themselves to learn after you escaped last time._

Clint snorted. _Get a spoon. We’ll team up against Nat._

 _I prefer caramel,_ Tony signed, smiling carefully.

 _This is better than the blinking lights,_ Clint told him. _But I’m totally ok with you not being naked._

Tony laughed despite himself, the sound coming out more like a bark. Clint grinned at him and nudged his head toward the empty seat to Natasha’s right. Steve was already pulling butter and milk out of the fridge, and Tony’s smile warmed up. He took the seat and Nat turned up the volume on the TV – _Once Upon a Time_ , really? – but before Tony could say anything, Thor thumped out of the hallway in nothing but a towel that was about three inches too small. Tony considered having larger towels brought in, but it occurred to him that Steve wasn’t much shorter than Thor. It might be a good look for him.

“Man of Iron, Steven! Congratulations on your joyous union!” He boomed, trailing water into the kitchen, where he thumped Steve on the back hard enough to make him stumble. “We were concerned about your welfare,” he said.

“No need for concern,” Steve said, and there was so much smug in his voice that Tony had to raise a hand to his mouth to hide the stupid smile. He brushed his opposite thumb over his Mark and listened to the clatter of glass as Steve stumbled. Their connection was still raw, and every slight brush was like taking hold of a live wire. It was so worth the wait.

“You have obviously not been getting enough calories,” Thor said with a ripple of concern running through his voice. Tony chuckled and Natasha elbowed him in the ribs.

Steve appeared over his shoulder a moment later with a bowl of vanilla ice cream drenched in warm caramel sauce. Holding out a spoon, he asked, “Unless you’d like a straw?”

“I’ll pass on the straw,” Tony said, dipping the spoon into the bowl.

Bruce stumbled in a few minutes later, gave them a barely coherent, “Congratulations,” and swiped a coffee cup off the counter before disappearing. Steve’s free hand dropped to his shoulder, thumb rubbing a circle across the back of his neck, and all Tony could think was that he would really like it if all his evenings looked like this.

The assemble alarm going off five minutes later he could have done without, but hey, suiting up with his team was novel enough to make it worth the wasted caramel sauce.

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit me on Tumblr: http://lightshadowverisimilitude.tumblr.com/
> 
> I make it a personal point to respond to all of my comments, even if it's just to say 'thanks!' If you don't want/need a response, feel free to include "NRN" (no response needed) in your comment.


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